THC 88: Duncan Trussell | Fear & Mindfulness In The Internal Universe

00:04 In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the Fireside Chats. His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times but we're far from 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire For a new era of worldly frustration We offer a fresh conversation! I'm Greg Carlwood These are The Hireside Chats Folks, here we go. Drinking a little drink, smoking a little smoke from sunny San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood Couldn't be more excited to be back today It's gonna be a great show You know, we examine a lot of strange things on THC Things like ritual sacrifice and blood orgies by the powerful secret groups in the world

00:50 Allegations of secret pacts between dark entities and corporate overlords, alien abduction secrets of the ancient world. The subliminal sorcery and mind control techniques of Hollywood and the culture shapers of the world. The list goes on and on. And you know we've gone deep down that rabbit hole. We all know that but the truth is for me I don't know if i'd ever gone down this path If it wasn't for finding in my youth comedians like Bill Hicks and George Carlin They took my frustration and my displacement and first of all they made me laugh but their bits on society and corruption in culture, those words were like a tuning fork for young Carl Wood. And I've always respected and admired the art of comedy and really pumped for today's guest one of my favorite living comics weaving just such a thread of truth and philosophy through the Afghan of his comedy so i'm sure we're gonna have a great time with this one and bringing in the new year with me is my good friend and occasional co-host Kyle Prentiville. Kyle my man how are you?

01:42 I'm so fucking pumped, man. I'm so excited it's 2014 the year of the horse Duncan Trussell is literally my favorite podcast He's your steed? He is my steed that is who leads my way So, thank you for bringing me on for this one. I'm so fucking pumped! Absolutely man. Things are great we're actually on the ballot of the Stitcher Awards The money bomb's over 150 bucks already. I'm really feeling great about everything it seems like a lot has happened since we've been on the air For one thing the people Colorado have been bold enough to deliver a beautiful fuck-you to the federal government by legalizing weed for retail sale to anyone over 21 Fuck the cards just as you would alcohol

02:25 It's definitely worth acknowledging. Weed is such a part of my daily life that I forget how serious it is, but it is! It's great!" And they made over $1 million in taxes the first day which was the big headline for supporters as if to say, see? we were right you can make a lot of money from selling weed Yeah, we know that The CIA knows that Pfizer knows that My girlfriend's brother knows that Drugs make money But you were telling me about this Rolling Stone piece Matt Saiby, he's you know one of my favorite authors and I had originally read a book by him that you lent me. I'm pretty sure where he was kind of drawing distinctions between 9-11 truthers and mega church people being similar but on other sides of the fence in terms of like craziness yeah

03:11 But he has really come around in his writings about banks and researching corruption in the banking industry. He now, in his articles for Rolling Stone, says things like conspiracy theorists right all along And this particular instance he recently wrote about is this bank HSBC, huge bank you know international global bank one of the biggest and they recently got busted. You know they're proven in court all this came out that they were laundering money for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels

03:48 knowingly laundering the money, knowingly accepting the money. It got so ridiculous that the drug cartels were designing specific cases to put the maximum amount of money that they could give to the teller through the little window box And it's just outrageous. And what ended up happening is that the Department of Justice decided not to pursue criminal charges against HSBC, and instead they just fined them with a slap on the wrist. They took the money and No one lost their job. No one got in trouble for this."

04:36 Yeah, I mean and when they find a bank like that it looks to the people like oh wow. That's a big fine You know they're really coming down hard on them They're not coming down hard of them at all What the HSBC was doing was taking money from the drug cartels and looking the other way And then the Department of Justice They have the opportunity to prosecute but instead they take the money as well and look the other way yeah, it's like The drug cartels need a place to get their money so they break off the bank. The bank gets in trouble, so they break off the Justice Department You know it's just another smelly layer to peel of for the never-ending corruption onion you know?

05:14 Yeah, and that corruption onion Kyle you really can see with this example. I feel like the connectedness like oh Okay This is the game the drug cartels are one aspect of it the banks for the laundering That's another aspect the Department of Justice you buy them off so you know they're not gonna bust anybody that's another aspect The Department of Justice as we've mentioned recently with the Fast and the Furious scandal. They're knowingly arming, selling firearms to Mexican drug cartels so they're arming these guys they're helping them move their money they're not prosecuting anybody and it's really exposing who are the kingpins in this drug game who were the biggest fish? The ones that can't be touched you know there is street dealers they're getting locked up all the fucking time but

06:03 The big billion dollar launderers of money? No, not so much. Of course! I mean it's just a different set of rules man everywhere you look we aren't in the clubs or the only way were allowed to make money is by finding our place on the gear wheel and then all those self-empowering creative ways to make money are filled with roadblocks they got a great system in place to make sure your passion enthusiasm for your great new food truck idea is bled dry and snuffed out by so many rules and so much red tape You just say fuck it and get a job at Applebee's where you can live out your culinary dream for a lot less headache And your corporate sponsored prison of fear sure I mean, I know plenty of entrepreneurs. I know run into injunctions and shit with the court and what the laws and They're they're very very the government is very interested in the nuances of a small business They're always trying to set up more obstacles and get more money out of this small business big guys

06:59 Not so much, you know they never... and their justification is oh we can't prosecute HSBC because then there would be a crisis of confidence in the banks. Well there ought to be a crisis of confidence in the fucking banks nobody trusts them! They're fraudsters It seems so transparent but It's just you gotta deal with it every day and then you get to come home do a chorus line of news networks that inform you have the widespread new knockout game. You know, so even though your broken scared and disrespected and depressed you should look at today as a net win because you didn't get knocked the fuck out by some out-of-control black kids right? I mean you've seen the stories in the knockout game how stupid is this

07:41 It's an example of how the media, the corporate media they're all on board with the same thing. Just like the banks they pretend like their competing, there not competing. They are all just in different slices of the overall pie and getting a cut of it. And they meme this idea that keep projecting knockout game, knock out game, knock out game. It becomes a term now we're talking about it you know? They brought into real life existence but obviously This is not happening. What is the incentive to go around knocking people out? This doesn't actually happen, it's just part of the news' overall strategy to keep everybody afraid, to keep everybody afraid of each other because if we're afraid of each other then we're not uniting and connecting and becoming powerful and realizing that our real enemies are not black teenagers but they are in fact HSBC and the Department of Justice and these people who claim to be representing us

08:36 We can realize we're all in this together if, you know we weren't so afraid that were gonna get knocked out in public. It is stupid I mean you put up a few smoke and mirrors and then people just they lose interest in finding out who's really fucking them! I mean 10,000 people a year killed by lightning what kind of numbers are the knockout game putting up? You know it's stupid If you weren't told you wouldn't even fucking know. They guide your attention they tell you what they want to be thinking about which is fear always to be afraid always be worried and they portray that you know if your consumer and your out buying stuff everything's great there's no depression there's no economic hardship going on never talk about that on the news not really worried about that but they project that

09:27 It's just a much more violent world than it actually is. Like the real violence isn't talked about, but they project that there's all this stranger on stranger violence going on. Yeah... We're here because we don't buy into the bullshit of mainstream culture. We're tired of the mundane, passionless careers we've been shuffled into as a result of this orchestrated debt-based system of rule and the stranglehold on education and entertainment by cold soulless corporations People yes, we are frustrated Yes, we are tired And we reject the brave rube tranquilizers that are Monday Night Football and an ice cold Budweiser But we have to stop hiding Stop hiding behind headphones in the Cherry Popper 420 username

12:55 Well, Hireside Chatters a lot of us see the world as an uphill battle against long-standing pyramids of power that use their various institutions rules and regulations to funnel most people into positions of soulless robotic 9-to-5 economic slavery. Where our frustration and isolation are left to boil inside knowing we've been left with little choice than abandoning our dreams and ideals for the ultimate swindle working as gears in the very corporate machines that keep us down It's no way to live, people. And a lot of times waking up to these ideas can lead to serious depression over just how stuck one might feel. Well today we're talking about a man who has been able to wade those dark waters and emerge as someone whose had the strength to follow his artistic path and hopefully can sprinkle us with little inspiration in education in these areas

13:37 The Crowley of comedy conjuring hearty gut laughs from the infinite dark abyss and the host of a digital soapbox of his own. One of my favorite podcasts, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour. The pimp of pimps himself, Duncan Trussell how the hell are ya? Hi! Hey man That's a heavy introduction Greg Yeah I do that Is that what you say every time No it varies but uh...I try to set the stage Wow! Yeah, man. Go ahead. Sorry No no it's cool I mean i'm just honored to have you here you know Thank You I'm sure half the audience is foaming at the mouth with an aching erection for this episode and another half is probably feeling a bit like I feel when I find out The Daily Show guest is going to be Jennifer Aniston or something like that Well I hope not

14:28 Well, you know I often credit the inspirational rants of Bill Hicks and George Carlin as like a real tuning fork for my young rebellious and confused self. I mean comedy was a dream of mine for a long time then morphed into this but As much as I love it It can also be agonizing torture especially in the early days And that's sort of what I was hoping we could start with with you man because I get a lot of messages from people that are on that artistic or entrepreneurial path and it's full of am I good enough, am i wasting my times? And it takes a lot of inner strength to work that out especially in the brutal comedy world. So let's talk about those early days man did you have a lot of those self-defeating thoughts? Yes! Comedy is an art form that based on rejection because thats how you develop as a comedian

15:22 are consistently being rejected by audiences of varying sizes and you're being rejected by whatever auditions that you're going on, and you're being rejected by people who maybe don't want you to be on their shows. And so you really do sort of develop through the rejection. You know? That's the thing A lot of times people, if you hear like a very beautiful person complain about their life. When I would hear that kind of roll my eyes and think oh right look at that beautiful person what do they have to complain about? They're symmetrical and beautiful and they have nothing to complain about but now i realize really the curse of a beautiful person is

16:10 They don't get to experience rejection as much as most people do. And by not experiencing rejection, it causes bits of their ego to sort of become enlarged in ways that aren't going to help them navigate the normal waters of life. You know how deaf people talk? The reason they talk like that is because they can't hear their voice, so their voice becomes different than the way people who can hear their voice talk in the same way a very beautiful person if they're not always surrounded by people who are only

16:51 being drawn to them because of the surface level. And if they're around guys who maybe just want to hook up with them and are attracted just the external surface and they start believing that's the most important thing, then it can warp their ego in a similar way to the voice of a deaf person. So stand-up comedy what you want is to get that instant feedback from the universe and more you allow that help you grow Instead of fighting against it or resisting it or thinking all these audiences are so bad It's a bad audience. One of the first things you learn in comedy is there are no bad audiences? It's just your ability to tune into the frequency Or tune them into your frequency rather and so So yes, that's a long answer but yes much much struggle much rejection

17:54 for which I'm now very grateful for. Yeah, I mean, I kind of agree with you. It's like the struggle builds character. Something that I've always liked is the idea of a Venus Project society or resource-based economy—I don't know if you're familiar with that—but basically a society where the goal instead of individual wealth is collective wealth and making sure the lowest common denominator has a life worth living. And I think about that and it sounds real utopian and idealistic but the one question I have about Well, see.

18:44 What you're saying there is that if there is abundance, then struggle will end. In other words, if there's some kind of external abundance and the internal struggle goes away. Kind of. Like in this type of society that people talk about as being near perfect, I wonder if that perfection could also really affect it in a negative way that everyone's just a little too privileged? Well right so again let's say what you're saying is a perfect society and when you say a perfect society here It sounds like your talking about external adjustments to the way things currently are So the idea is like just imagine instead of this being

19:26 whatever this reality happens to be, that it's a computer simulator and we could shift every single external aspect of the universe to make it so that every person on earth has the clothes they need, food they need shelter. All their basic needs are met even more than their basic needs. So there is now only time you know, everything comes down to some form of self-expression because there's no longer the necessity to labor in the way people do. So let's imagine that we can adjust things like that. Some people think if these adjustments were made then now we would have a perfect society or that people would experience happiness because these external adjustments have happened and if I were

20:19 Satan and I really wanted to create a hell dimension. Mm-hmm What I would tell the people are and I could implant one idea into their heads then the first idea I'd want to implant into their heads is if you change the external world, You will feel better internally and at point because what that would then result it as a constant hunger and a constant need to buy things or shift things, or if only I could change this person in my life then suddenly I would be so much better. Oh if only I could make my girlfriend understand this thing or that thing or my mom or dad or boss! And what ends up happening is you have relinquished all of your power to the external world. You've just given it all away and now you're a victim

21:15 So, I think that the idea is if we focus on working on ourselves in the internal world and really focus on going deep into ourselves and understanding where our blocks are that are keeping us from really experiencing love then the natural result of that is that our external world begins to change naturally. It begins to change in the same way that if there was a projector that has dust on it, if you get the dust out of the projector then that giant dark shadow on the screen will go away.

21:56 Yeah, see I like that's what I like about you man is this you're into this spirituality wheelhouse. Uh, I mean i've been a big fan of Alan Watts for a long time That's pretty much where i've gotten all of my knowledge or thoughts on spirituality and it all sounds good when I have the earbuds in but I have a hard time. It doesn't really resonate into my life all that much and that's kind of the point that I'm at I know Kyle is here with me, and he is my spiritual friend. He takes...he's my Zen friend you know? He takes a lot of this stuff more to heart than I do And I want to but I just feel that I'm kind of spiritually retarded and maybe Alan Watts would say that I'm putting that limitation on myself when I say that and I'm making rules for myself but

22:43 How has it really resonated for you? How have you been able to feel these things that, obviously, you've studied a lot. Have you been able to incorporate them into your life and actually make some change?" The whole thing starts off for most people as a tail feather that you want to throw up. It differentiates you mostly It's really important to young people to differentiate themselves, or create a kind of this is what I'm all about. So people will wear clothes that indicate they're a member of whatever demographic the clothing choice represents.

23:27 It's a way to associate yourself with people you respect and it's a way to differentiate yourself from people that maybe, um...you don't want to be like. Usually that is your parents as a form of rebellion so spirituality for me started off just as a way to get girls really. It just started off as like I mean it wasn't a conscious decision oh I'm going talking about meditation so that girls will think I'm spiritual. It was a deeper thing than that, but in the Bhagavad Gita it's one of the really...one verse I really like Krishna is talking about the various people who come to him and its not like the holy people of the world come to me. It was something like seekers after wealth there's a lot of like you know like the people who come to me initially are coming to

24:20 for their own personal desire, for their own personal gain or to get high off of it. That's a better way to put it. It's another reason people get into it is because they want to get high! They like getting high and they can sense that in the practice of meditation there's an intoxication that can happen or in the expansion of the self there's kind of depth that can be reached. Of course yeah So, it starts off like that. And so a lot of you know that's the funny thing with service or helping other people. A lot of people will say, you know, I... You only want to help people because it makes you look good! You only want to help people because your getting off on that and it makes you feel good. It's like yeah exactly exactly That's exactly right Thats why we all start these things is because it feels good But the funny thing about spirituality I think can be compared to something I read about

25:17 The networks that distribute and sell LSD tend to dissolve because the people who are in the process of selling LSD are also taking LSD. And, the more you take LSD, the more your personality goes from being an individual to a sort of non-differentiated oneness or when you're on enough LSD, you spend time in this state non psychoactively induced non dualism. And so in the same way with spirituality, with meditation, with exploring your internal universe what begins to happen is that your initial reasons for getting into it fall away and So when I'm sick tell you know if you say this doesn't resonate with you or in the real world It doesn't resonate with you.

26:13 It doesn't resonate with me a lot of the time either, but it's something I can always return to and go back to. And that's why it's called a practice. Good point! It's not like you decide oh I'm going to be spiritual today and then you walk around shooting phony smiles at people while inside your just a cauldron of rage You know, it's not that's not what it is at all. It's uh and a lot And that's why I think a lot of people you run into say they're spiritual right away or like shut the fuck up look at you here receiving Your seating you're so angry. You're so angry and it's like that's right They are angry but the difference may be between them in a regular angry person Is that they are making? steps at least in the direction

27:02 of working on themselves and dissolving that internal anger. And if that means shooting phony smiles at people, I don't think that's the worst thing ever but so it's a process and its a process that doesn't happen maybe even in one incarnation and what that means is we have to be very patient with ourselves with this stuff I definitely resonate when you say that it's a practice because for me personally, yeah. I listen to Alan Watts lectures but it just wasn't enough. He is funny and great but when you actually start putting into practice then when you hear poets like Rumi or certain people say things, you're like oh! It fucking hits you like a ton of bricks because you felt that. That's not appealing to your thinking mind. You have fucking felt that

27:50 And like some of these spiritual concepts, like what's called faith or trust. Like trust that things are going to be not necessarily good but just they're gonna be what they're gonna be and you're learning from it no matter what That kind of trust... You have to physically be invested in that It's not just a It's not like a get out of jail free card, kind of thinking about what heaven is where you're like oh well I believe in God so I'm on the right team and eventually I'm going to get my pass through that pearly gates. But trust is like Fuck man, I'm at my lowest. Oh no it gets even lower from here but i still have to keep invested keep the things in motion unlike Sisyphus I just got to keep pushing because although It seems like I'm at my rock bottom. I have to physically trust that this is going somewhere other than The sometimes extreme pain that I feel in the present moment

28:47 Well, you know one thing that you said I really liked is getting out of your thoughts. Because the thoughts are what you were just talking about and that's very much what my mind will tell me too. Your thoughts will try to come up with all these like well it's going to get better or worse or I am like Sisyphus This is something that Jack Kornfield talks about. The mind, in the same way that the mouth salivates spittle saliva, the mind salivates thoughts so it's like the mind is always creating thoughts and thoughts and thoughts. So we get caught up in those thoughts and our attention becomes focused on those thoughts

29:37 So, the simple idea is to move from those thoughts into the heart or into the place where we just feel. That's kind of the practice is developing mindfulness so that now we're watching these salivation of the mind and the form of all these various thoughts and you sit and watch. You don't have to sit down and meditate to do this. You can do this now! You can watch the thoughts that might be in your mind right now or the way you feel right now and you just sort of watch this. And the more that you watch, the more you begin to see the funny ways that there is a thought that seems so important within a few minutes will dissolve without resolution. These thoughts always come up they're always seeking some like it's like one side of an equation that's always seeking the other side of the equation

30:35 But you'll notice the other side of the equation never really comes. Maybe you'll come up with some answer here and there, but quite often they will be some question or unresolved thing and then it just dissolves away. And over the course of that, this whole time that you've been caught in your thoughts, you have been ignoring how your body feels And then suddenly you look and you're like, fuck my back hurts. My shoulder hurts. My foot hurts whatever there's all these hit these pains in your body that You've just been ignoring while you've been caught up in this crazy endless auction that's happening in your mind

31:16 super fast chatter of your brain. Then you're like, shit look at these little pains and then the more you watch the pains in your body maybe then you'll start realizing I'm fucking lonely man! You know what i mean? I feel lonely or sad or angry tired or I feel scared you know then that's when you really start watching then you realize like underneath the loneliness it's fear man fucking terror and then you're like holy shit inside of me is just a ball of

31:57 primordial terror because at my deepest self I know that everything i have including my body will be annihilated by the force of time and if that's not terrifying, I don't know what the fuck is. But we are so horrified by this idea that we try to escape from it by diving into our thoughts into the external world and the process instead of running away from this thing initially seems like a multi-headed Hydra, the goddess Kali with a necklace with the heads of the gods that she's wearing. The decapitated gods this primordial destructive force inside instead of running from it you turn and face it and thats... The more you turn in face it and sink into fear the more the fear begins to go away and underneath

32:53 Holy fucking shit man! Underneath that, that's where paradise is. That's the Garden of Eden. That's where suddenly you realize you're in heaven only it was too intense It was too much love. It was to much beauty for you to accept it so you escaped all the way out into your ego which is where most people live I imagine that enlightenment would be a situation where suddenly that ego mechanism, which was essentially just the sand you were trying to poke your head in completely dissolves and all you experience perhaps is this endless sense of harmonious love or loving kindness.

33:43 and I heard you talking about these types of things and the artist's path, and you said there are a lot of closets to come out of. Like the artist closet. And I thought that was really unifying way to put it because most people have something they want to be but are just afraid whether it is homosexual or chef or rock star. It takes courage To be the you that you really want to be, it's fucking tough man. I mean how have you coped with The artist path? You've been doing this a long time and i'm sure it seems easier now but when you first started out there was tons of self doubt Well what you begin to learn is that the more you get out of your own way And trust That whatever is supposed to happen happens So its a really funny thing

34:45 When you begin to realize that you're the one who is the, you're the one, you're the obstruction. You are the only obstruction and when you begin to realize that it's a hilarious thing. It's like you've solved some hacky murder mystery where the detective is the murderer and all time he has been trying to trace what's, who has done all these or who's causing all these problems and finally realizes that somehow it is himself. So when you begin to realize that your greatest moments are the ones where you're not a little you, you is not even there anymore and if you just let go and allow this incredible explosion of

35:34 happeningness that is constantly recreating itself in every moment come through you, you really are just that thing and if you stop resisting that then whatever it is that needs to come into the world as you and through will come into the world. And so it's that process of just letting go. That's what I learned, when you begin to notice that your best sets when you're doing standup comedy, you're not there. You get off stage and you weren't there. You're like who the fuck was up there? When you're writing and the best stuff is coming out of you, then hour passes and you look back at what you wrote and think man, that person is a good writer but that's not fucking me

36:22 And then when you're on your best rants or having your best podcast, you might not even remember what you said. That's what I've learned. It's a process of surrender and it's where surrender meets revision. Yeah! You are the only obstacle that really strikes a chord with me. That makes a lot of sense. I haven't said this before, but most of my shows for the longest time have started with the line drinking a little drink smoking a little smoke. And that really came from a place in the early days where I wasn't confident talking to someone like Rupert Sheldrake or Jacque Fresco and it was like a backdoor to saying hey i'm a little drunk i'm a little high so if this interview sucks well I wasn't 100 percent and now I'm over that now but I think that's a big thing you know people self-sabotage

37:10 If you say to yourself, I'm only trying with 70% of my effort and I fail. Well that's not so bad because they didn't give it 100%. So it's not a complete and utter failure. That is so ... You are the only obstacle thing is so true. It's really fascinating when you start realizing that. And if you're a conspiracy theorist then you begin to realize That you are the fucking conspiracy. That you've been projecting out into the world all of these terrible things that are actually not out there at all! Now I'm not saying that there isn't a military industrial complex, or prison industrial complex...

37:58 people profit off of medicine and that bankers have figured out how to use television to hypnotize and manipulate people into believing they need to take out terrible loans to get homes and cars. I'm not saying that's not real, but what is the deeper problem? What's the deeper, deeper conspiracy? What would make it so all those fucking hypnotic rectangles no longer had any effect on the brains of the people absorbing that information. What would do that? What would make it so all hypnosis became completely irrelevant

38:45 What would that be? That's an important question because if you could answer that question, then in it you would have the seeds of a true revolution. It wasn't based on force It wasn't based on military intervention. It wasn't based on toppling dictators or overthrowing power structures, which we've seen since the beginning of time only leads to the rebirth of those identical power structures. What would be something that would be a true transformation to society? What would be the seed of that? It would have to be some kind of internal realization. And that internal realization I think would be understanding that you are not a oneness or an individualness but your part of the whole thing and it will be a kind of letting go

39:36 I think. Something like that, you know? Because it's a really funny thing man when you start working on yourself and you start working on embracing and loving that dragon that has been rampaging through your life disguised as you then that thing starts changing! And when that thing starts changing all of the sudden your behavior changes in really fascinating ways You'll get cleaner your house will start getting cleaner maybe. You'll start eating a little better, it's weird you start slowing down for real not because you think you should slow down but because you're actually enjoying the moment and then that's a weird fucking thing too because all of sudden if you are somebody like for many years I defined myself by my anger

40:27 You know, I was angry all the goddamn time man. I was fucking pissed at my mom for not believing in me enough or I was pissed at my dad for being a an alcoholic when I was a child. Or, my girlfriend for not loving me the way that I wanted to be." Anger! Anger! When that starts going away then you begin to understand the idea of Buddhism and the cause of our suffering is attachment

41:05 and you realize that they weren't necessarily talking about our attachment to matter, they were talking about our addiction to anger. Our addiction to the negative feeling states that give us a sense of form You begin to realize that you've been addicted to this and when it goes away there's a weird kind of withdrawal And you start fighting against happiness which is really funny thing to find yourself doing Like I've been walking along just walking my dog No girlfriend. I used to always have to have a girlfriend, no girlfriend you know just alone in the world walking my dog by the river, by the LA River

41:46 And all of a sudden I feel happier than I've ever felt in my life. And the first reaction that comes into my mind is, am I going crazy? I can't be happy right now with just this! No! I have to have something happening. I have to have some goal I've reached, some external thing and when all of a sudden the happiness just starts coming minus the external thing you get really... it's weird man It doesn't seem right That's, I think one of the exciting byproducts of beginning to work on yourself. Sorry for the long ramble my friend. No that's what you're here for! That's kind of where I get stuck because when people say be happy and look at the positive things in your life because it could always be worse.

42:42 I get caught up in feeling like it could always be better too. That to me isn't an excuse, you know? Just because it could be worse doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it better. Yeah, I know what you mean! This is the idea that a spiritual practice implies a type of passivity... A numbness? Yes right or like religion is the opiate of the masses. So spirituality is a kind of like numbing escape mechanism that we use to rationalize being trapped and not getting out of the trap

43:31 I understand that and why people would think that but let's imagine you and i had fallen into a pit trap. And we're stuck, we're like stuck in this trap now if your like you know in a state where your mind is disturbed were angry or freaked out are scared right? Who's going to have a better chance of figuring out how to get the fuck out that trap? So, the idea is that this isn't something you do to try and avoid improving your external circumstances. This is something

44:20 So that when your external circumstances improve, you can enjoy those improvements. And that's something that so many people they work and work and work because they think if they change the world or get this or that or whatever it is, they're going to feel better. They are in a constant state of anxiety because there always in between place. Their life is always in between It's basically like a sandwich and each piece of bread is whatever moment where they've gotten something that they think is going to take away the anxiety, right? But the sandwich that they're eating all the time is a sandwich made of anxiety and fear in the sense that I've got to get to the next fucking goal. The next stop! The next thing it's a form of addiction

45:14 It's like you get the, whatever it is that you're striving for in this incarnation. A promotion at your job, a job, a lover. You get on TV if you're a comedian. Whatever the thing is that they've been telling you is so important, you finally get that fucking thing and then that high will be very fleeting high. The next time you get something you've been working to try to get for a very long time Go into a mindful state and watch the biochemical high that's happening as your brain releases dopamine. And you suddenly feel that rush of confidence, and this is what it's all about! Oh yes I'm really here! And now watch as that gradually diminishes

46:02 Then you find yourself back in the same goddamn anxiety state that you were in before he got the fit, right? So that's when that's when you realize oh fuck I'm a crack addict, only i am not addicted to crack. I am addicted to the dopamine that is released in my brain any time external circumstances line up in specific way that gives me the feeling of accomplishment and thats...I don't know if thats anyway to live because those moments..if that's when you are alive then that means your going to be alive during your entire life maybe if your lucky for a week

46:40 I would much rather, if it were possible, experience that sense of peace and connection and happiness in the middle of the sandwich. So when those moments of accomplishment come, I didn't have that gnawing sense like this isn't really going to last, I'm just gonna go back where I was. You're gonna enjoy getting stoned so much more if you can find a place where you can be harmonious and at peace regardless of how your external circumstances line up.

47:23 In the West, we have a really hard time with spirituality or even knowing what the purpose is. I feel like we have no way to identify somebody who's taken a holy path and we don't even understand what that is. And Joseph Campbell talks about how in the West, the mind is so consumed with being right—it's right or wrong? It's the end group or you're exiled. So you're always trying to be on God's good graces. You're always trying to do whatever necessary to please the authority And the consequence of this is that we don't have a spirituality in the West like they do in the East where the whole point is to get into accord with nature. So, in the West what we have is we're trying to override nature, we're trying to manage and control and be in charge of our natural impulses, we're trying to self-censor ourselves, we're trying to put the best face forward—all of this as an attempt to put on a show that says, oh yeah I'm doing things right!

48:19 and it's all about being right. And we're so consumed with being right that we fucking hurt our girlfriends and our loved ones, and we're just always trying to prove we're right. We're like obsessed with this thing. We're stuck in the head, and it's nothing to do with getting in harmony with what's natural. And I think that is when you put spirituality into practice and you really delve into it, It's about relaxing, relaxing into the present moment and not feeling this like...I don't know, just pent up anxiousness where you're just trying to resist the present moment, you're constantly just trying to be in the past or future. You've got to get into what's natural and sometimes what is natural is maybe what you previously thought was naughty or off limits or something that shouldn't be doing That's a beautiful way of putting it! Yeah And I think what your describing there is a form of compassion for yourself So instead

49:21 It's an embrace of the self versus this sort of western idea like I'm going to be a better person. Yes, I am a better person now! It is not that. That is what we dealt with when you were little kid and they always want you to be different internalize that constant tension from your parents pushing you in this direction or that direction and then you begin to think the way to express love for yourself is by always thinking that you should be different. And not just something that you've sort of absorbed from the world so one huge act, one giant revolutionary act that you can do is you could start loving yourself the way that you are right now

50:10 I mean that's a wild idea for a lot of people because they look at themselves in the mirror and think, Look! I have love handles. Or they think I drink too much or whatever it is there is always something you need to change about yourself in the most drastic way as soon as possible all the time so if you stop that If you just give yourself a break, man. A real break! Because it's like let's really consider our situation here We got shot out of the pussy into time and we're gonna die Think about that We are going to die! We are dying right now And everything that you have is going away and everyone that you know is going to turn into dust

51:02 This is not the easiest class to be taking and it's important to acknowledge that, not just for ourselves but for the people around us. So if you've been eating too many hamburgers or if you've been smoking too many cigarettes Or if you've been drinking too much booze or if you've been too angry with your neighbors or your girlfriend The first step is to recognize, oh yeah that is there. But instead of then being not just addicted to something and followed by guilt ridden Because of this thing that you're doing just think man, you know what I get. I understand it. I get it I see why you're reacting to the world in this way. I understand You're just trying to find a little warmth if you're just trying to find some way To experience, you know To experience happiness

51:57 So, that's the first step man. You embrace yourself and you love yourself. That is why psychedelics can be so very useful because they will show you yourself in a way that maybe you're not quite ready to see and that is what people call the bad trips. That's where when you get stoned or paranoid... I remember one of my first bad marijuana trip was smoking weed in North Carolina. It was high school I was sitting in the back of my French shitty car and I closed my eyes and saw myself standing at the edge of this obsidian cliff, in the middle of some blasted wasteland. Completely naked!

52:36 fat body and my weird overbite, my weird teeth and my Weasley nose. And I was looking at it now is sort of rotating around him to seeing myself right? So all i did that moment was like oh god! I hate it! I hate myself! I hate being...I don't like this me! I want to be in shape healthy. I want a symmetrical face. I resisted you know and that created a terrible trip. I went home fell asleep woke up a little depressed So psychedelics will show you this thing that you perceive as yourself. And if you can, when you see the thing just make the smallest attempt instead of running away from it to love it embrace it forgive it accept it This is the universe and its perfect as anything else in the universe and if you could just make those attempts at doing that wow man

53:33 All of a sudden you'll find yourself being a little more loving to the people around you because you realize that the thing that was annoying or irritating, angering and the people who come in contact with throughout the day was not some implicit aspect of that person's self but the projection of who you are and the parts of yourself you can't accept onto the screen of the world. I love it man! Let me ask about that aspect of uh... getting high spiritual practice as opposed to psychedelics because I've had several guests you know spiritual guru type of guys who have dismissed psychedelic when i brought them up and they say it's an artificial way to reach those deeper levels of reality, those deeper aspects of the self. And they'd say they get a lot more benefit out of getting there naturally with meditation spiritual practice and I'm excited to hear what you would say about this because I think your one guy whose

54:33 experience both sides of that? How do they compare to you, is it a different thing altogether?" Well whenever I hear a spiritual teacher advise sobriety in an adamant way like you have to be this way if you want to gain realization. I'm always suspicious of that because it reminds me of like, you know anytime a year in Christ. You know there is no other way to the Lord but through the acceptance Jesus Christ It's you know it seems to be a version of that and its advising Its saying you have to be pure in this way if you want to If you wanna achieve realization now, you know the

55:23 group of people that I hang around with is the Ram Dass group of people. And you know, Ram Dass was Richard Alpert who was hanging out with Timothy Leary and taking psychedelics and really taking psychedelics man! These days we take psychedelics and some people might take a heroic dose here or there but They were literally drinking LSD, like drinking it. God damnit! Who knows how much they were taking? And they were trying to dissolve their ego boundaries and doing a lot of social experiments over the course of exploring consciousness through psychedelics and they all came to different conclusions but Alpert realized that he didn't want to come down anymore

56:22 And so his problem was not that the psychic, it was not a state that the psychedelic was creating which is kind of unified unit of consciousness. His problem was every time I reach this state of merging, I come back down and I'm me again no matter what. I am inevitably a me again. So his question What is this state that I get to when I take psychedelics? What is it because we don't seem to have maps for in the West. That's how he put it We don't have the maps for it So you wanted to go to the east and, you know Give LSD two different spiritual practitioners to see if they could tell him what the fuck was what was this psychedelic state and And of course a natural question Is there a way to induce this day

57:14 Without the drug because that's a well be a very cost-efficient an efficient way to live if you could if you could reach a state of unit of consciousness without some kind of Substance being necessary to reach that state. So he went all over into the giving at giving LSD That was manufactured by Fucking Owsley, you know ows Lee is no so Owsley Ousley funded the Grateful Dead. When you see those Dancing Bear stickers everywhere, Ousley's nickname was Bear. So Ousley funded the Grateful Dead through selling LSD. I actually know somebody who rode around with Ousley when he was making some of his LSD deliveries and said that he would get out

58:06 go up to people's houses and they would come out and bow to him. Hands on knees, because they thought he was some kind of psychedelic saint. So he manufactured a batch of very powerful LSD for Albert and Albert took this to India and gave it to people and everyone had different responses and he talks about these and some of them were like I don't like it! Some people were like give me more! This is awesome but finally He was getting sick of India and he's driving around in a Range Rover with a friend of his. I think they were about to go to Japan, he was just going to study Buddhism in Japan but his friend's visa was expiring and he said listen I have to talk to my guru. And Alpert was like whatever man Hinduism is this garish symbolic bullshit you've been taken in by con artists

59:06 and that was in his mind, you know. Very cynical very skeptical and that's fine to be that way you should be that way you need to have discernment in life but so basically he ends up as the story goes the night before he ends up... And this is by the way I am going answer your question about psychedelics a tool or something not used on spiritual path. This is short answering that question of course like the night before he had been He'd been standing under the stars taking a piss and he had been thinking about his mom who had died like six months before. Something had happened with her spleen or something, so they come to this...his friend goes running up to this guy sitting in a blanket and bows down to this guy sitting in a blanket and is freaking out and weeping and Alpert's looking at this old Indian man

1:00:06 Indian man in a blanket and is like, whatever this is absolute bullshit. And they've been driving around in Alpert's ice car I don't know what it was a Range Rover or some kind of nice thing he's really hung up about it because his friend had let him borrow it right? So this man in the blanket looks at Alpert and looks at the car and looks at his friend who has been bowing to him and says that your car? His friends are like yeah give me give it to me let me have Now, he said the exact thing that Alpert would have been the very most unnerving thing for him to hear. Which is what gurus tend to do is they lock in on the very thing you're really hung up about and they sort of strum it.

1:00:52 Like the string of a guitar or something. So he's freaked out about it and the man in the blanket motions for him to come over, and he is standing in front of him And the man looks at him like how much money do you make a year? That's what he asks. It's all this materialistic shit Neem Karoli Baba is who this guy is. He's a saint, basically and he doesn't need anything! I know many of his devotees now and people...he didn't care about money. Money was not a thing for him. He would spend his entire life sitting eating

1:01:32 Sweets and sitting under a blanket, you know But people were really hung up about this shit and Alpert was especially so you know he outverts like You know very proud of himself. He's this like educated, doctor rich son of a fucking zillionaire. He's like really puffed up you know? So he's saying how much money he makes a year and everyone around them are like they're kind of laughing and smiling And then the guy looks at him says last night you were standing under the stars right? And Alfred is like yeah that's not that hard to figure out anybody can know that right? And then he looks at him and he's like You were thinking about your mother weren't you

1:02:14 And Alper's like, what the fuck? Now that's a little out there but still maybe somebody can figure it out. Then he mispronounces spleen because he doesn't speak English so he tries to say spleen but he says in the wrong way You know, she did. Yeah yeah yeah! So Alpert's first thought before his ego was shattered by the experience of being around a being like this was is this some CIA experiment? Because this guy is using telepathy and I'm a trained psychologist and I didn't tell anybody about thinking about my mom under the stars And there's no fucking way that this guy knows that my mom died of an enlarged spleen

1:03:01 So that was his first contact with a very advanced being. And then he says there was like a pain in his chest, and it felt like something inside of him had broken His heart had opened up and then he just started sobbing. He felt like he had come home because he found his guru, lucky son of a bitch! He'd actually come in contact with an awakened being now so we started studying in this place, in this ashram. At one point Maharajah, what they call this person, Neem Kerali Baba

1:03:46 was talking with him and he said, you have medicine don't you? You have medicine here. I want to try your medicine because they knew that he had acid. He knew he had some kind of thing that he'd been giving people and so he gives Maharaj-ji a thousand micrograms of LSD created by who is still one of the most famous LSD chemists on earth! And uh...he eats it in hour passes nothing Two hours passed, nothing. No effect man! No effect! Think of a thousand... Have you ever taken 1000 micrograms of LSD? No

1:04:29 I am mad can you fucking imagine man cuz like these days like I don't know what the how many micrograms hits of acid are these days But I think when I was taking them if you were lucky maybe a hundred my it's maybe, you know Who knows so that's like ten hits of 90s acid. You know, so like so That's fucking wild right? Yeah, there should be a chemical reaction just there should be science The I should dilate something should happen. So he ends up going back to the United States He relate you know, he's been converted transformed opened up by this being And I think he was telling someone about this experience as friends like you are such an idiot You fall and pray to like a basic

1:05:11 He palmed the pills. He didn't take them, he just said there has to be a chemical reaction so he returns to India and he has LSD but he hasn't stopped taking LSD or stopped taking psychedelics even having met his guru and started this kind of spiritual path He's around Maharaji again and it is the same interaction. He gives him his medicine, this time he puts it in his mouth

1:05:46 Chews it up. I guess they're like micro dots or something, chews them up opens his mouth so that Ram Daskins' mouth is now coated with whatever the fragments of these hits of LSD are again these beings They're not like normal humans there's some level telepathy to them They can tune into what a person is and what their fears are, what they're worried about. So now Alpert is giving him a much larger dose than he's given him last time and he sees that this guy has chewed this up and Neem Kerali Baba goes underneath his blanket right? Some time has passed, he goes underneath his blanket, Alpert Ram Dass is watching him and he's making these groaning noises

1:06:35 You know, like groaning half screams. Alpert thinks what the fuck did I just do? Yeah! I just drove an old man in India crazy That's what i just did because God knows how much he took He is not prepared for this He might have a heart attack He is making all these moaning noises He comes up out of the blanket His eyes look crazy He looks crazy and then he smiles And starts laughing Because he was fucking without man. He's fucking with him, you know cuz he's like oh your medicine is powerful It's driven me mad West, you know Oh great Western Medicine Western science Western technology guess what it doesn't have power like you guys think it does and he said to Albert if

1:07:28 He said, there used to be something like this in the Indus Valley is what he said. And he said this will bring you into the presence of Christ is what he said then. The Christ energy! But the whole point is that psychedelics are a way to go into a certain state To understand that you're up at the universe is a much, much bigger place than what you've been taught. And that is very valuable thing if your somebody who's skeptical or closed down it will open you up the problem with your clothes back again so the idea is

1:08:17 The psychedelics are the way in. Alpert, when I interviewed Ram Dass for my podcast he said he wouldn't have gotten to Maharaji if not for the psychedelics He wouldn't have found his guru if he wasn't on this pilgrimage through India giving acid to any sadhu who would take it. So, it was a stepping stone on the path but if we become idolatrous and we begin to think that these psychedelics are the only way then were no different than the person who tells us you can't use them at all They're just another step in the unfolding evolution of the self or the awakening to the realization what you really are. And so anything that is a step in the direction of wakening, as far as I'm concerned, that's a great step. Well said man! I totally agree.

1:09:17 I just have yet to experience that other side. And, you know, I'm hungry for it! I pay attention to a lot of teachers and speakers that seem to have reached some type of enlightenment extracted some type of insight from those kind of states but i think another aspect is just the time like if Knowing that I want to get into meditation, I actually have been a little more mindful of where my time goes. And you know unless you are really trying to it's very easy to go through entire days and weeks where you have nothing but input input input the stereos on you get out of the car you walk into the house the TV is on and You're just taking an input all day usually people fall asleep with the TV on first thing they do when they wake up might be grab their cell phone or

1:10:07 or turn the TV back on. And if I guess you really do have to separate yourself from that, and it's just like within the nine to five framework of life for most people it's like when the fuck are you going to do it? You know, it seems like such a monumental task to shove in there. That see that's what the mind does. The mind will react to spirituality or meditation in the same way that a cat or dog reacts to getting a bath Yeah, and it'll come up with all these things like oh no we work too hard too many hours too many hours of work Too much input to I know because you know I do this so the idea is that We are not trying to trade change Ourselves right now. So dead this does not mean that we watching TV and we give up our job or

1:11:02 It doesn't mean that we stop playing video games. It doesn't mean that we stop getting high, it doesn't mean that we stop anything! It means that we enter into every moment with mindfulness So now what were doing is watching ourself so instead of being fully absorbed in the thing Let me give you an example I recently got badly addicted to this video game called hearthstone never played that no i've played a lot of games but it must be a computer game right it's it's a computer game blizzard is released at all was okay let me explain blizzard the world work out guys and when you get this is an embarrassing addiction because this is a fantasy

1:11:50 Card game like Magic the Gathering. Yeah, we know that yes Okay So I'm addicted now to I was addicted to this fantasy card game called Hearthstone just a brutally addictive Game that's so fun. But when I get addicted man, I get fucking addicted That means like you know hours and hours and hours of playing III start feeling ill from it now All that I did because i've been playing around with these concepts, all I did was add mindfulness to the addiction. So now when im playing the game, Im still playing but now when Im playing the game, Im watching myself and watching the way that I act

1:12:38 when I play. I'm watching the way my body feels, and watching really the way I feel emotionally as i am playing the game. I'm watching a little flowering hits of dopamine that come from winning a game. The way that I am clearly in a trance, I'm clearly in a hypnotic state when I played the game. I'm watching this sense of numbness, I'm watching the weird anxiety attached is kind of itching frantic mouse pushing the lever that, you know, injects him with morphine feeling as I play. And now just watching that's it! I don't try to stop the addiction. I just watch this thing and begin to see oh this is like a form of hypnotic seizure You know? I'm creating kind of like dopamine seizure every time i go through in combination of music and graphics

1:13:28 This sense of victory and buying cards, all of it has created this amazing subjective prison that my attention has been locked into. And I just watch and watch and let myself keep playing And you know what starts happening, man? I stop wanting to play. It's like...I just don't think I like this anymore and now it's gone. Now it's gone. Now I'm not saying that I'll never play the game again. I haven't played in days but some...so I didn't think...I'm a major now!

1:14:10 of fantasy digital card games because I'm so fucking holy. I don't do that, no way man! I was sitting there drinking vodka getting stoned playing this stupid game and just watching Because that's the idea. We're watching this, we're watching the framework of habituation that makes up our personalities That's all you have to add to life Just watch yourself for once instead of being fully stuck in the drama of your life just step out a little bit and watch the thing play out

1:14:52 It's amazing, just that is enough. Maybe your idea of what this practice is more like somebody who enters into a Shaolin temple and has to get their balls kicked by by months for a week. Your true self. There you go! Yeah, whether it's a... You know whether that's a natural part of life or orchestrated by A dark machine Who knows but apparently the solution is just to remember what you've forgotten? Yeah I mean that's- That's a beautiful way to put it. You know there was this story uh.. I don't know if you know that monkey god Hanuman? You know that god Hanuman? Kyle probably does

1:16:07 There's a Hindu monkey god called Hanuman. And there are a lot of great stories about this god, who was a servant to Ram the creator. Ram is the name of God in Hinduism and this monkey has done all kinds of things for Ram like you know this is mythology. Mythology is of course a container that contains within it an energy, you know to get it across. So Hanuman has done all these fantastic things for Ram and Ram says to Hanuman no one has ever done these things like for me before monkey what are you? What are you monkey that's what Ram says too And Hanuman says to Ram when I forget who I am I serve you

1:17:08 when I remember who i am, I become you. And uh...I think it's a beautiful way. Yeah isn't that cool? So so as long as we're- As long as we've forgotten who we are and and and in as long as we have the courage to at least admit that We clearly are the universe with some kind of amnesia Right Then isnt' the logical step To as much as we can serve the other parts of the universe that have amnesia as much as we can with loving kindness and compassion. So instead of seeing this person is an enemy, and this person is a friend, all these are just tendrils of the universe that have forgotten who they really are just like us

1:17:59 So the logical thing is let's just help as much as we can the people who are around us I'm not saying go down to a fucking soup kitchen and dish out soup to be homeless You could do that definitely Do that if you feel compelled to but guaranteed there was somebody around you right now Someone near to you someone who needs your help in your circle of friends That you've been putting off helping Just fucking help them. Do that as your practice, don't burn incense candles and stare at your guru you don't have to do any of that shit That might happen eventually but really if you want the quickest way the fastest way to experience this thing it sounds like you wanna experience then the best way to do that is just get into a mindset helping people around you and in the process doing that

1:18:54 you will notice a kind of dissolution of your ego starts naturally happening anyway. That's well said and good advice, because that's kind of...and maybe it's my own ego saying like oh you don't need that shit! Don't worry about that shit but I always say to myself what is the purpose of self-discovery without action? Because a lot of the high-end gurus, there's a lot of talk. There's a lot of sitting around and trying to inspire but it's like where is the real action? Well you know sitting around and trying to inspire could be considered an action if you really are... That's true. But this is... Neem Kerali Baba gave three instructions to Ram Dass when he came back from the United States and that was love everyone

1:19:45 Serve everyone and remember God. Those are the three instructions simple as that so Simple is loving everyone But but but but that's it It's a real simple thing, you know We want some comp now That's maybe a problem as you high in gurus as you put it or some people You know they they try to make everything really complicated because you could It's easier to sell complicated than it is to sell simple. You know what I mean? If you have some complicated fucking system, then you sure as fuck can make a lot of money off that if you make it a secret thing or pay thing right but how the fuck are you gonna sell help everyone around you as much as you can? That won't fill a book!

1:20:36 You know that won't even be a blog. That's like a tweet it's a half a tweet Yeah, it's half of fucking tweet But with it contained just within that is Is a fractal which has within in every scripture every devotional poem? Everything right there That's it right you know that's it and people don't want that I I certainly don't want that. You don't wanna fucking just realize that the great sacred holy moment is not necessarily going to come when you ascend some peak and a UFO comes down and gives you some transmission, it's gonna come when you bring your sick neighbor a bowl of soup because she knows she isn't feeling well and can't go get

1:21:25 soup even though your neighbor is a fucking bitch who constantly yells at you for leaving your clothes out in the laundry room. That's the divine moment and if you want to extrapolate from that societal reform or transformation of society, imagine if everybody adopted that concept And then from that, instead of having an imposed system you have a kind of emergence of underlying transcendent form rising up through human action. That thing...wow! What would that look like man?

1:22:10 Nobody knows because it's never happened. Right? Well, there are a lot of people in the conspiracy world who when I talk to them They say you know all this stuff that we're talking about all these little details and how we're being fucked It really is all illusionary these power structures are really only there because Michael DeSario, one of my favorite guests he said you know everybody's worried about being sold a lie but what you should really worry about is have I bought a lie? You've made the conscious choice to buy into all these things that you seem to be so frustrated with and if everybody just collectively said nah it's not important we could transcend all these serious stresses in our life they would just kind of melt right away.

1:22:56 Yeah, well I don't know if they would melt right away but I know that immediately the moment you got into a mind state where you're just going to try and help people around you as simple and obvious as that sounds it seems like you would begin to undermine one very important idea. For the war machine to work, for the military industrial complex there's a big idea that everyone needs to have which is that there is them and us. That's really important man you gotta have an us in the nation for war even exist it's really important

1:23:35 You need an us and them situation that represents the people who believe the right things, and the people who believe the wrong things. So the moment you start getting rid of that us-and-them as much as you can...you're not going to get rid of it all maybe ever. You do start undermining one of the pillars of the war machine in a way Directly fighting it maybe isn't necessarily going to work. You just become the thing that you're fighting, and I'm not saying don't take action there are times when their action needs to happen the Bhagavad Gita takes place on a battlefield but that battlefield represents more of the internal struggle do that first find out where the pyramid with the eye floating above is inside of you first

1:24:32 You know, and allow that thing to transform the internal conspiracy cops in the head. Let that change and then see how the external world changes with it Well said. I mean, it's pretty much like the phrase that I've heard you say before that resonated with me was kill the vampire in your life and it seems like now you've kind of evolved into love the vampire which uh... That's the struggle! That's the part I'm struggling with Me too friend and its not going to happen all at once And thats a really important thing to realize You just have to recognize this is not

1:25:12 It's not a pill that you take and everything is better all of the sudden. And it's not like you're going to always feel like opening yourself up to the people around you, you won't! You're gonna be as much of a shithead... A lot of what you feel might just be some biochemical imbalance because you didn't get enough sleep You know, so you're not going to like... it's not like we're talking about this fast instant thing. It's just that you recognize that this is a process and its a process based on loving yourself. Just love yourself! I mean Christ, it sounds so simple but when you think about it you might realize that you've really been rejecting parts of yourself in the most extreme way. You don't have to do that

1:26:06 Yeah, it's really easy to dismiss. You say yeah I hear you love yourself but what else? It's very easy to try and look around that and find something else instead of confronting that which really is challenging so people are like look for something easier but to pull this thing together how would you package some of this material You know someone out in the audience who is stuck in a nine-to-five reality They are dying to get out of it there. They want to break free with some type of creative expression or live the artistic path and they're having Financial problems, they can't pay the bills you know everything's pulling at them You know what kind of advice would you give to someone in that situation? How do you love yourself how do you deal with the vampire in your life and also still

1:26:57 Try get into something better. You know, there's this a story that I just heard about an even Caroly Baba that That I thought was so so cool as he was out in the boat on the Ganges River with one of his disciples and they're floating out in the river and He says to this guy jump out of the boat And the guys like I can't swim I'll drown And he says, no jump out of the boat. And he's like I can't do that because i can't swim and Maharaj Ji, Neem Keerli Baba points to this bridge you know it's really a high bridge and He said You could jump off of that bridge if wasn't your time to die wouldn't die so finally this disciple jumps out of the boat into the Ganges River

1:27:57 And the water's only waist high. So it's like, so you know, so often there is this action that we know we have to take and it's terrifying and that's what they call the leap of faith. It's terrifying because you have to dive off of this cliff eventually and find out what's underneath Because there's just clouds. You know it's a long fall, you don't know what's down there! It could be rocks and rubble and you could land twisted and broken among the corpses of all the other insane people who jumped off that cliff thinking that there was something safe down there. And at the bottom of that cliff is an ocean of warm water filled with

1:28:55 Blowjob mermaids. You know? Right, yeah! It could be down there too but no because if you knew there wouldn't be any kind of initiation and it wouldn't mean anything and it would just be you diving into a hot tub if you knew there was hot water down there so... There are many times where you will find yourself feeling this kinda butterfly sensation in your stomach when you think about the action that you need to take And if you could take that action with a sense of mindfulness and surrender and trust, then even if disaster is at the end of the bump.

1:29:40 At least you experienced true autonomy and freedom in that one moment. I'm not advising irresponsibility if you're stuck at a job, if you have family to feed, or children and need to feed people. You can't just give up your job and leave. But there might be something smaller, there might be a little step that you can take in the direction of this great leap that you haven't taken yet. And your pretending that your too busy to do it Maybe night classes or morning classes, or maybe something that you could do on the weekend. If you read The Count of Monte Cristo I love these prison escape movies where they don't do it all at once It's tiny little movements in the direction of freedom. Perfectly said! Yeah yeah that's a great analogy So these tiny movements

1:30:37 They might not even start with an external action, they just might start with beginning to develop a state of mindfulness. Watch the way you're acting at your job. Watch the way that you work. Watch just the way you are. See the way you interact with people around you All the different internal states that happen, the anxiety that comes and goes. The tiredness that comes in the afternoon or the feeling of dread and suffering as you go to work. Watch this! Just open up yourself to watch the way that you feel and behave in this situation. And somehow just that mindfulness and attention might begin to create necessary changes

1:31:21 to the rudder of yourself that begin to cause you to move in a different direction. For time we're all being sucked inexorably in the direction of The Void So that could just be something you can do. But one thing is for certain, there's always something you can do. You're never truly trapped and if you think your trapped then the trap is one that you have laid for yourself and one that you've allowed yourself to get entangled with. Your'e the hunter and the prey so maybe ideas to surrender

1:32:06 And surrender means giving up this war against yourself. You don't have to be in a constant eternal struggle with yourself anymore. Yeah, I mean just like what you're talking about Terrence McKenna, a quote i used to love he says magic is done by hurling yourself into the abyss and realizing it's a feather bed There ya go! Yes Exactly and sometimes it's not yeah, sometimes. It's not but I'm good to fucking it's rocks And you can you hurt yourself? And you fucking hurt yourself so it's like that That's an important thing to realize the abyss sometimes is not always a feather bed

1:32:47 And that's why Chogyam Trungpa says that this feeling of disappointment is a really great place to begin the spiritual path. Because the feeling of disappointment is in contact with things as they are, versus the way you wish things were. Things as they are! Get into that, the way things are right now. Surrender to that! Amen man and people shouldn't let that fear that it might not be a feather bed paralyze you I mean like you were saying i love that prison analogy You can dig that tunnel one inch at a time and eventually climb out of that prison I thought that was a great analogy but man if thats about our time I really appreciate your being here Kyle is there anything you'd like to add?

1:33:44 Yeah, I just want to say Duncan. I'm a huge fan of been a fan for such a long time and You know you rarely get feedback like this But let me just say to you man that when you were putting out these episodes with your mother When she was going actively going through the dying process And you were facing it and you are being honest about it, and you are sharing it That happened to coincide with the period in my life when my wife and I had quit our jobs, lost our home, fucked up our whole marriage and our so-called financial security. We moved in with her parents and her dad was dying of a terminal brain illness at the same exact time. Wow! Same time... And we re-listened those episodes over and over and it's just so

1:34:36 There's nothing in comparison to how raw emotionally and therapeutic that was for us both. And I would just say thank you very much, Hare Krishna! That is so helpful. Thank you. I'm glad that my mom could be of service to you because that's definitely what she was into and um... You know, that's something When somebody dies, you know it takes a long time to really process it. But one thing that I keep thinking is like my mom had a spiritual practice and she if anything really speaks for what can come from working enough It's how gracefully it will allow you to die And she died in a very graceful way In a very selfless way

1:35:31 And I think that speaks more for what can come from really beginning this journey into the self. You know, is that you could actually leave this dimension with grace and in a way that leaves the people who are still here not feeling such a crushing sense of bitterness or anger towards the natural way things are but spellbound sense of love and a feeling that the world is, even though a light has gone out of it that I'll never have again still feeling that the world is as much a beautiful place as it was when they were there. That's how you want to leave. You know what they say? I just heard somebody say there are two good times to plant a tree 20 years ago or right now

1:36:36 Yeah, that's well said. And I feel that applies to spiritual practice. There are two great times to start this path and you could start it when you were 11 years old or an 8 year old in Tibet because you were picked as some reincarnated llama. Or you could start right now at this moment Just be in this moment now. And yeah, I think that's something my mom probably wanted... That's an idea that my mom wanted to get out into the world so thanks for listening to that! Well said man. It has really been a fucking treat and

1:37:24 I hope we've extracted a little inspiration for the people to get their new year started. For those who don't know you and want to flex their Duncan Trussell muscle, where can they get more of you man? Yeah! You can go to duncantrussell.com and that...you could follow me on Twitter it's at dunkintrussell but my tweets aren't that great but you could follow Follow me if you want! True love will find you in the end. There it is! Thanks again, man. Best of luck to you in the new year. Hare Krishna and nice chatting with you guys. Thank you very much. Thank you Duncan. Bye! See ya! Alright man... Wow what did you think? I mean that was a pretty great episode Did you take anything away from that maybe is a little clearer than it was before

1:38:38 Yeah, I really liked when Duncan was talking about you know perhaps not the best way to fight the war machine is To go out there and do anti-war protests And you're fighting the powers that are with power like you're trying to combat the combat and so in this you know a Hindu way of putting this is the chakra system. And so the third chakra is all about power That's about personal power at the highest Chakra amongst the animal form or like a lower forms and non realized individual And they call the third chakra the yoga of war but right above it is The real breaking open up the heart that is fully giving in trusting surrendering to self love and unconditional love

1:39:32 And when you reach, when you really reach that it's not just a hypothetical. It's not a philosophical thought its a feeling man You fucking feel that love for yourself and thus for each other and you realize when you start paying attention to other people at the same time your like quieting your own self criticism so like its a service to yourself to help other people and be aware present with them and listen to them And so, if you really can break open the heart. If you really put the spirituality into practice You get to this fourth chakra position and it's akin to The mother holding the baby The anger of the third chakra This war-like military industrial complex If you really get to what they mean when they say unconditional love and loving yourself Then your holding the fucking military industrial complex like a baby It's just an angry baby It's shouting out for attention

1:40:28 And you can be mindful and be present and not be controlled by it if you try to fight the powers that be. You're trying out Alpha, the alpha male, and it's never going to happen. And you can try to make it happen but you're just gonna be in constant conflict But the way to transcend conflict is to, as Duncan was saying, love oneself. Love other people and serve other people as a service to oneself and that's the fucking... That is such a good message that breaks the ultimate conspiracy which is that we are powerless individuals. That I think is the ultimate conspiracy is limiting the human potential and you can crack that shit wide open if

1:41:13 Work on yourself. Boom, so with that we're gonna get the hell out of here THC was fortunate enough to actually make it on the ballot of the 2013 Stitcher Awards under the category science and medicine I don't know why were in science and medicine but you know it's convenient to say that THC is always the best medicine So that's what i say you know we got that going on the thc money bomb is going strong that is where you know we try to pull our resources together to continue the show and help people in the listening community. You donate some money to THC on every fifth episode

1:41:52 I'm gonna give half of that money to a random listener. So far, it's gone good the first time and we're doing it again If you got some money to throw around conspirates.net is where you can pick up conspiracy themed clothing designed by me We also have an Amazon portal now On our website. So if you're, if you click on the little box on the sidebar that says shop through this and we get a commish That's where that happens so you can help to show out that way when you're just random randomly buying things for yourself There you go service to the self helping others through service of the self there You go it means shopping on Amazon for me awesome It's been a fascinating talk welcome to the new year motherfuckers True love will find you

1:42:40 in the end you'll find out just who was your friend don't be sad I know you will but don't give up until true love will find you this is a promise with a cat only if you're looking can it find

1:43:31 Because true love is searching too. How can it recognize you unless you step out into the light? Don't be sad, I know But don't give up until True love will find you