1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,500
[Music]

2
00:00:10,500 --> 00:00:13,840
What does it mean to be called crazy in a crazy world?

3
00:00:13,840 --> 00:00:18,040
Listen to Madness Radio, voices and visions from outside mental health.

4
00:00:18,040 --> 00:00:27,960
[Music]

5
00:00:27,960 --> 00:00:31,320
Welcome to Madness Radio. This is your host Will Hall.

6
00:00:31,320 --> 00:00:34,080
And today my guest is Stephen Morgan.

7
00:00:34,080 --> 00:00:39,640
Stephen is a psychiatric survivor and he is a trainer for intentional peer support

8
00:00:39,640 --> 00:00:43,720
and it has worked in peer support settings for more than two decades.

9
00:00:43,720 --> 00:00:48,560
Stephen was also the project developer for Sotiria House in Vermont.

10
00:00:48,560 --> 00:00:52,080
So welcome to Madness Radio, Stephen Morgan.

11
00:00:52,080 --> 00:00:54,160
Thank you. Lovely to be here.

12
00:00:54,160 --> 00:00:58,600
Yeah, I want to remind people that I interviewed you a while back on Madness Radio.

13
00:00:58,600 --> 00:01:03,520
And that interview gets more into maybe some of your personal story as a psychiatric survivor

14
00:01:03,520 --> 00:01:04,760
and the system.

15
00:01:04,760 --> 00:01:08,320
And since then we've had a lot of really interesting conversations.

16
00:01:08,320 --> 00:01:11,920
And so people can check that out on the Madness Radio archives.

17
00:01:11,920 --> 00:01:16,640
And since then you and I have had a lot of very interesting conversations about

18
00:01:16,640 --> 00:01:21,440
what is reality, what is psychosis, what is the nature of mind,

19
00:01:21,440 --> 00:01:25,960
how psychedelics maybe play a role in understanding that.

20
00:01:25,960 --> 00:01:32,120
I noticed that you're calling in from your caravan because you're out in the wilderness

21
00:01:32,120 --> 00:01:37,040
traveling and living very, very close to nature, which you've been doing for many years.

22
00:01:37,040 --> 00:01:41,640
I love seeing your hand built trailer there and you're in a really beautiful setting.

23
00:01:41,640 --> 00:01:45,120
So maybe you could just tell us a little bit about what you've been doing and what has

24
00:01:45,120 --> 00:01:47,720
drawn you to live so close to nature.

25
00:01:47,720 --> 00:01:53,280
Yes, well, I've currently got a little 65 square foot camper.

26
00:01:53,280 --> 00:01:57,080
And I've been on the road in some former fashion for about 10 years.

27
00:01:57,080 --> 00:02:02,400
I've had a couple of periods where I've jumped off for various reasons, but it's mostly

28
00:02:02,400 --> 00:02:04,600
been consistent.

29
00:02:04,600 --> 00:02:07,160
And I've been living west of the Rocky Mountains.

30
00:02:07,160 --> 00:02:10,840
That's sort of been the only thing for me that's been really important is I don't want

31
00:02:10,840 --> 00:02:13,760
to go back east, which is where I'm from.

32
00:02:13,760 --> 00:02:14,760
How come?

33
00:02:14,760 --> 00:02:16,160
Well, I love the southeast.

34
00:02:16,160 --> 00:02:21,360
There was a lot of reasons why I tried to make this kind of lifestyle work.

35
00:02:21,360 --> 00:02:26,720
Part of what was really, really active for me back then was I have extreme sensitivities,

36
00:02:26,720 --> 00:02:29,320
machine noise and sound.

37
00:02:29,320 --> 00:02:33,680
And it didn't matter how far I traveled into the woods.

38
00:02:33,680 --> 00:02:36,000
I lived in Vermont for eight years.

39
00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:37,000
It just didn't matter.

40
00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:39,800
I'd always hear a lawnmower and air play.

41
00:02:39,800 --> 00:02:40,880
Those kinds of things.

42
00:02:40,880 --> 00:02:41,880
I tried everything.

43
00:02:41,880 --> 00:02:43,880
You know, then I tried meditating with them.

44
00:02:43,880 --> 00:02:45,640
I tried all this different stuff.

45
00:02:45,640 --> 00:02:48,720
And so I needed quiet.

46
00:02:48,720 --> 00:02:52,800
Then I was actually looking at flight paths and trying to find where airplanes don't fly

47
00:02:52,800 --> 00:02:54,800
overhead.

48
00:02:54,800 --> 00:02:59,400
So the real propulsion for me actually finally making the leap was like, I really sick with

49
00:02:59,400 --> 00:03:00,920
an autoimmune disease.

50
00:03:00,920 --> 00:03:04,640
And there's something about all of that that, you know, what else you have to lose kind

51
00:03:04,640 --> 00:03:07,000
of thing, take the risk.

52
00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:10,120
And that's how I kind of initially got started.

53
00:03:10,120 --> 00:03:14,280
So the autoimmune disease is connected to the machine sensitivity or is also about

54
00:03:14,280 --> 00:03:17,640
pollution exposure and air quality.

55
00:03:17,640 --> 00:03:20,640
Globally autoimmune diseases are on the rise.

56
00:03:20,640 --> 00:03:26,800
And there's a lot that's tied into post industrial life that I think is valid.

57
00:03:26,800 --> 00:03:30,120
The specific disease I have is called ankle-ocin spondylitis.

58
00:03:30,120 --> 00:03:33,240
It's a process where my bones fuse together.

59
00:03:33,240 --> 00:03:36,080
It's actually been observed in dinosaurs.

60
00:03:36,080 --> 00:03:38,360
It's in part, bacteriaally caused.

61
00:03:38,360 --> 00:03:39,880
It's in part genetic.

62
00:03:39,880 --> 00:03:41,920
I mean, there's all that stuff.

63
00:03:41,920 --> 00:03:43,520
The physicalist explanation.

64
00:03:43,520 --> 00:03:47,040
I think there's all kinds of other layers, but it's been around on the planet for a long

65
00:03:47,040 --> 00:03:48,040
time.

66
00:03:48,040 --> 00:03:51,200
So the physical condition is like the bones start to fuse together and they've actually

67
00:03:51,200 --> 00:03:53,640
observed this in fossils and dinosaurs.

68
00:03:53,640 --> 00:03:54,640
Yes.

69
00:03:54,640 --> 00:03:55,640
Whoa.

70
00:03:55,640 --> 00:03:58,480
That's like some serious ancestral healing going on.

71
00:03:58,480 --> 00:04:03,440
Well, bacteria have been around for so long, you know, and their forming communities that

72
00:04:03,440 --> 00:04:04,760
they're also sort of fighting it out.

73
00:04:04,760 --> 00:04:06,920
They're doing all the same stuff we are.

74
00:04:06,920 --> 00:04:11,280
And this particular bacteria that's associated with my autoimmune disease, yeah, it's very,

75
00:04:11,280 --> 00:04:13,160
very, very old.

76
00:04:13,160 --> 00:04:18,680
But bacteria itself is not necessarily harmful for creatures, but if certain conditions are

77
00:04:18,680 --> 00:04:24,880
met, then your immune system may start attacking your body, trying to wipe out the bacteria

78
00:04:24,880 --> 00:04:25,880
and it's confused.

79
00:04:25,880 --> 00:04:30,560
And so it attacks these cells that are in the collagen between your bones.

80
00:04:30,560 --> 00:04:34,480
And as it attacks the collagen, it wears that out and your body is constantly trying to

81
00:04:34,480 --> 00:04:38,440
repair that by building new bone, which causes fusion.

82
00:04:38,440 --> 00:04:40,960
So it's a very painful disease.

83
00:04:40,960 --> 00:04:44,160
Especially if you break your leg, your body sends a bunch of inflammation, it starts healing

84
00:04:44,160 --> 00:04:45,560
it and things get better.

85
00:04:45,560 --> 00:04:47,760
But this is a process when it's really active.

86
00:04:47,760 --> 00:04:50,560
It's the equivalent of kind of breaking a bone every night.

87
00:04:50,560 --> 00:04:53,000
So you just start over and start over.

88
00:04:53,000 --> 00:04:58,520
So you've been really compelled to make your way into the wilderness west of the Rockies.

89
00:04:58,520 --> 00:05:02,640
And how is it that being in nature helps your autoimmune condition?

90
00:05:02,640 --> 00:05:04,800
I mean, is it the calm and peacefulness?

91
00:05:04,800 --> 00:05:07,240
Is it the toxin exposure or?

92
00:05:07,240 --> 00:05:10,520
I think there's just a whole lot of layers with that.

93
00:05:10,520 --> 00:05:15,480
I've been kind of compelled to just spend time in wilderness as much as possible since I

94
00:05:15,480 --> 00:05:18,240
was young and that became very, very active in my 20s.

95
00:05:18,240 --> 00:05:19,240
It's fun.

96
00:05:19,240 --> 00:05:21,240
I was in hospitals and stuff like that.

97
00:05:21,240 --> 00:05:22,640
Yeah, I moved to Vermont.

98
00:05:22,640 --> 00:05:26,280
I got a job there and I loved to Vermont.

99
00:05:26,280 --> 00:05:31,840
It was quite, you know, I wanted to be in natural settings and a lot of community life there,

100
00:05:31,840 --> 00:05:33,320
a lot of wonderful things.

101
00:05:33,320 --> 00:05:40,240
But this little devil or angel in me kept pushing me and needed more connection with

102
00:05:40,240 --> 00:05:42,280
wilderness and I could get there.

103
00:05:42,280 --> 00:05:46,600
And when the autoimmune disease started when I was 28, it wasn't terrible.

104
00:05:46,600 --> 00:05:49,400
It took about four years to start to get bad.

105
00:05:49,400 --> 00:05:51,240
So I'm in my early 30s.

106
00:05:51,240 --> 00:05:55,880
And then part of it was the psychological trauma of just not knowing if I'm going to be physically

107
00:05:55,880 --> 00:05:56,880
disabled.

108
00:05:56,880 --> 00:06:02,600
So when it got really active, about 31, 32, I was the director of a community center for

109
00:06:02,600 --> 00:06:07,920
psychiatric survivors called Another Way, which is a great program in Montpelier, Vermont.

110
00:06:07,920 --> 00:06:08,920
Yeah.

111
00:06:08,920 --> 00:06:11,280
I went around for decades, very interesting.

112
00:06:11,280 --> 00:06:13,000
You know, it was going through a lot of shifts.

113
00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:18,200
That was kind of where I cut my teeth on this sort of grassroots peer support where when

114
00:06:18,200 --> 00:06:22,400
I came in, you know, we had a little budget, but no one was really paying attention to what

115
00:06:22,400 --> 00:06:24,520
we were doing there and we in the house.

116
00:06:24,520 --> 00:06:28,480
I had also been concurrently for about four or five years, working on getting the satiria

117
00:06:28,480 --> 00:06:29,840
house funded.

118
00:06:29,840 --> 00:06:34,280
We got it funded from the legislature and this is sort of my dream job.

119
00:06:34,280 --> 00:06:38,080
I've been wanting to do this and I came into that work.

120
00:06:38,080 --> 00:06:42,760
And then after a few months, I was at the end point of a year and a half of sickness, so where

121
00:06:42,760 --> 00:06:44,600
I just couldn't take it anymore.

122
00:06:44,600 --> 00:06:47,200
I was like, I have to uproot everything.

123
00:06:47,200 --> 00:06:48,600
I had a little bit of savings.

124
00:06:48,600 --> 00:06:53,720
I mean, peer support is kind of hard to save a lot of money and I took my old car and I drove

125
00:06:53,720 --> 00:06:55,360
out west.

126
00:06:55,360 --> 00:06:59,560
And at that time, I spent five months on the road living in like a little coffin size tent

127
00:06:59,560 --> 00:07:03,120
that you would take on like the Appalachian Trail or something.

128
00:07:03,120 --> 00:07:06,560
And that was, yeah, I guess the healing when you're asking about like, what is it about

129
00:07:06,560 --> 00:07:07,560
it?

130
00:07:07,560 --> 00:07:11,800
The communion with other creatures.

131
00:07:11,800 --> 00:07:12,880
And honestly, just sunlight.

132
00:07:12,880 --> 00:07:15,840
Like, there's not a lot of sunlight up in Vermont.

133
00:07:15,840 --> 00:07:17,320
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

134
00:07:17,320 --> 00:07:18,320
That was huge.

135
00:07:18,320 --> 00:07:21,720
I've been fortunate that I've had periods of my life where I can just put down a calendar

136
00:07:21,720 --> 00:07:24,920
and I don't have to pay attention to clock time.

137
00:07:24,920 --> 00:07:28,680
All of that stuff I found incredibly healing as well.

138
00:07:28,680 --> 00:07:34,760
And I should also say, at base of all this, I've been doing like very radical dieting

139
00:07:34,760 --> 00:07:36,040
for 10 years.

140
00:07:36,040 --> 00:07:38,960
So that also has a huge part.

141
00:07:38,960 --> 00:07:44,000
And eventually when I left Vermont and I had a west about a few months into it, I will start

142
00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:45,320
to go into remission.

143
00:07:45,320 --> 00:07:46,320
Right.

144
00:07:46,320 --> 00:07:47,320
Which was amazing.

145
00:07:47,320 --> 00:07:48,320
It was kind of a miracle.

146
00:07:48,320 --> 00:07:51,560
And that lasted for three years, but then it came back with a vengeance.

147
00:07:51,560 --> 00:07:55,480
So that's where you are now.

148
00:07:55,480 --> 00:07:58,040
You're out of remission and into the vengeance.

149
00:07:58,040 --> 00:08:00,840
Well, I went through four years.

150
00:08:00,840 --> 00:08:05,040
My job was the operations manager and trainer for intentional peer support.

151
00:08:05,040 --> 00:08:12,040
So I was kind of flying all over the world and I had to go to India and I got some of the

152
00:08:12,040 --> 00:08:15,240
things that you get in your arm.

153
00:08:15,240 --> 00:08:19,440
Before going to India and a few weeks later, my autoimmune symptoms turned back on.

154
00:08:19,440 --> 00:08:24,760
This is 2016 and once they came back on, they came about 10 times worse and I couldn't

155
00:08:24,760 --> 00:08:26,480
turn them off no matter what I did.

156
00:08:26,480 --> 00:08:33,840
I mean, and that lasted about four years culminating in 2020 was just a hellscape of disability.

157
00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:36,760
You couldn't walk through hospitalized, all that kind of stuff.

158
00:08:36,760 --> 00:08:41,960
But anyways, the last two years, I've been in a kind of remission for most of the time.

159
00:08:41,960 --> 00:08:47,080
So what I'm hearing is that you were pushed by your physical illness, but you're also seeking

160
00:08:47,080 --> 00:08:48,080
something.

161
00:08:48,080 --> 00:08:51,800
You've been trying to find a way and it's been healing for you.

162
00:08:51,800 --> 00:08:56,280
But I also know that this has been part of your own spiritual and philosophical quest or

163
00:08:56,280 --> 00:09:00,080
journey or process to get closer to nature.

164
00:09:00,080 --> 00:09:05,200
You said being closer to the creatures and I know you and I have talked quite a lot about

165
00:09:05,200 --> 00:09:08,000
what is this thing called psychosis.

166
00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:13,680
I'm really interested to hear what are some of the things that you're discovering 10 years

167
00:09:13,680 --> 00:09:20,320
on the road, 10 years living really close to nature, unplugged, disconnected, very, very

168
00:09:20,320 --> 00:09:26,480
much off the grid quite a lot, but then bouncing back in to do your trainings and doing traveling.

169
00:09:26,480 --> 00:09:32,480
What are some of the things that you've been exploring on a spiritual, psychological level?

170
00:09:32,480 --> 00:09:37,720
The way I think about it, my 20s, I had a very kind of vertical orientation.

171
00:09:37,720 --> 00:09:44,440
I was very interested in God and then I left my Christian religion, I explored Taoism and

172
00:09:44,440 --> 00:09:49,640
Buddhism, I have a Gita, all of that for a while, very vertically oriented.

173
00:09:49,640 --> 00:09:53,880
When you say vertically oriented, how do you mean like the metaphysical looking beyond?

174
00:09:53,880 --> 00:09:54,880
Yes.

175
00:09:54,880 --> 00:10:00,240
Yeah, the transcendent and questions of purpose that have to do with not utilitarian purpose,

176
00:10:00,240 --> 00:10:03,440
but about why were we made?

177
00:10:03,440 --> 00:10:04,440
Ultimate meaning.

178
00:10:04,440 --> 00:10:05,440
Yes.

179
00:10:05,440 --> 00:10:07,280
The answer is what is life.

180
00:10:07,280 --> 00:10:13,120
Then I step off that path, in part because it's deep into some of the Eastern practices

181
00:10:13,120 --> 00:10:19,960
and stuff and I came to realize that, well, one, I'm a Westerner, so that's my ancestral

182
00:10:19,960 --> 00:10:20,960
lineage.

183
00:10:20,960 --> 00:10:23,280
It's actually not the East.

184
00:10:23,280 --> 00:10:28,680
I suppose if I was going to say one thing the West has done well, it's actually an allegiance

185
00:10:28,680 --> 00:10:31,680
to the passions.

186
00:10:31,680 --> 00:10:38,280
I kind of realized that this sort of dispassionate way of being felt a little bit like it wasn't

187
00:10:38,280 --> 00:10:42,800
aligned with some sort of deep into ancestral history of me.

188
00:10:42,800 --> 00:10:47,200
I also would notice with meditation and stuff that allowed a certain kind of consciousness

189
00:10:47,200 --> 00:10:50,840
that was really beautiful because it allowed me to get a handle over my mind.

190
00:10:50,840 --> 00:10:56,840
I often felt disconnected from people and I wanted more connection and so I kind of abandoned

191
00:10:56,840 --> 00:10:58,800
ship entirely.

192
00:10:58,800 --> 00:10:59,800
It's really interesting.

193
00:10:59,800 --> 00:11:05,360
So I think we tend to abstract religious traditions and religious practices from their

194
00:11:05,360 --> 00:11:13,440
cultural context, but it seems to me that maybe Eastern philosophies are really super interested

195
00:11:13,440 --> 00:11:22,160
in detachment and stepping away from the world and letting go of the web of relationships

196
00:11:22,160 --> 00:11:25,640
because people are so deeply, deeply embedded in that.

197
00:11:25,640 --> 00:11:31,520
You have a mainstream culture in India or China that's very super family oriented and

198
00:11:31,520 --> 00:11:37,040
very super about connection and involvement and activity.

199
00:11:37,040 --> 00:11:40,640
The spirituality that emerges is about detachment.

200
00:11:40,640 --> 00:11:43,800
There's maybe in the West we suffer from the opposite thing.

201
00:11:43,800 --> 00:11:45,240
We're really super individualistic.

202
00:11:45,240 --> 00:11:47,880
We're already kind of detached.

203
00:11:47,880 --> 00:11:52,200
Everything is moving so fast that like it comes and just let it go because your job is

204
00:11:52,200 --> 00:11:53,200
going to change.

205
00:11:53,200 --> 00:11:54,760
Your community is going to change.

206
00:11:54,760 --> 00:11:58,880
And then you have a religious tradition that's more about relationship and more about connection

207
00:11:58,880 --> 00:12:00,880
and maybe more about passions.

208
00:12:00,880 --> 00:12:07,920
So it makes sense why there would be an attraction to the Eastern philosophies because in a

209
00:12:07,920 --> 00:12:13,960
weird way they kind of reinforce the non-attachment and the letting go and everything is changing.

210
00:12:13,960 --> 00:12:18,880
Let's just roll with the changes and it's go with the flow sort of ephemerality.

211
00:12:18,880 --> 00:12:21,040
That's really interesting.

212
00:12:21,040 --> 00:12:26,240
So what we really need is more connection, but instead we go with what culturally fits

213
00:12:26,240 --> 00:12:33,240
which is this import of Buddhism and import of Taoism which is kind of more individualistic.

214
00:12:33,240 --> 00:12:37,880
So it's sort of appeals to us like yoga. I'm thinking yoga practice has been so picked up

215
00:12:37,880 --> 00:12:45,120
because it fits with this Western Protestant self-improvement thing which maybe makes sense

216
00:12:45,120 --> 00:12:49,240
in India where you're so embedded in traditions.

217
00:12:49,240 --> 00:12:51,360
But here we just have a marketplace of traditions.

218
00:12:51,360 --> 00:12:53,560
We just have this incredible individualism.

219
00:12:53,560 --> 00:12:58,480
So the individualism of the East which would make sense in the East where it's conflicting

220
00:12:58,480 --> 00:13:03,880
with tradition or it's counterbalancing or compensating for tradition, here it sort of

221
00:13:03,880 --> 00:13:08,040
just goes along with the mainstream and that's what fits in so well.

222
00:13:08,040 --> 00:13:09,040
That's really interesting.

223
00:13:09,040 --> 00:13:12,120
It's interesting to think about it like that religious traditions have a counter-vailing

224
00:13:12,120 --> 00:13:16,320
influence or sort of speaking to what's not currently there.

225
00:13:16,320 --> 00:13:17,320
What's missing, yeah.

226
00:13:17,320 --> 00:13:23,600
Yeah, and I just don't think religious traditions can be derasinated from the land out of which

227
00:13:23,600 --> 00:13:30,200
they emerged and especially the cultural history and I learned a lot from studying Eastern

228
00:13:30,200 --> 00:13:32,400
traditions and got a lot out of it.

229
00:13:32,400 --> 00:13:39,440
For instance, mindfulness, the treat meditation as sort of an act of managing anxiety is ridiculous.

230
00:13:39,440 --> 00:13:42,760
Meditation arose in the culture where people try to understand the fundamentals of the

231
00:13:42,760 --> 00:13:43,760
universe.

232
00:13:43,760 --> 00:13:46,480
Man, it's a really different modality.

233
00:13:46,480 --> 00:13:50,800
You might increase your anxiety if you're encountering the nature of the universe.

234
00:13:50,800 --> 00:13:54,480
You might actually add to your distress but people don't approach it now.

235
00:13:54,480 --> 00:13:57,840
They approach it as a wellness tool to kind of calm down.

236
00:13:57,840 --> 00:13:59,640
Again, it fits with the culture.

237
00:13:59,640 --> 00:14:01,120
It's like you don't reach for your beer.

238
00:14:01,120 --> 00:14:03,320
You reach for your meditation cushion.

239
00:14:03,320 --> 00:14:08,320
Look, this set of philosophical ideas from these that point add a kind of detachment.

240
00:14:08,320 --> 00:14:11,040
Oh, that's probably not the right word, you know.

241
00:14:11,040 --> 00:14:14,080
One book that really influenced me was called the Feeling Buddha.

242
00:14:14,080 --> 00:14:18,560
Talked about the original Sanskrit when Buddha was talking about the noble truths.

243
00:14:18,560 --> 00:14:25,240
The idea of enlightenment comes from a Sanskrit where people think it means putting out the

244
00:14:25,240 --> 00:14:26,240
fire.

245
00:14:26,240 --> 00:14:33,000
But his whole argument was actually that the Sanskrit says without end and that the idea

246
00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:35,040
is not to put out the fire.

247
00:14:35,040 --> 00:14:40,240
But it's just to not have it blow everywhere that's going to burn down the barn.

248
00:14:40,240 --> 00:14:44,200
That whole set of philosophical ideas, especially because in the East, I've been thinking about

249
00:14:44,200 --> 00:14:49,640
studying consciousness for thousands of years.

250
00:14:49,640 --> 00:14:56,360
Because of my madness, my madness was so caught up with invasive thoughts and ideas.

251
00:14:56,360 --> 00:15:02,040
It was incredibly important to cultivate some kind of detachment from that and not to identify

252
00:15:02,040 --> 00:15:03,600
in that stream.

253
00:15:03,600 --> 00:15:08,200
To calm your mind and get the passions under control in a sense.

254
00:15:08,200 --> 00:15:11,200
But then it reached a point where, whoa, that's actually not what you need.

255
00:15:11,200 --> 00:15:12,200
No.

256
00:15:12,200 --> 00:15:14,760
I was giving you that, but you want to go back to the West.

257
00:15:14,760 --> 00:15:19,240
You said Christianity and the Western traditions are more about exploring the passions or connecting

258
00:15:19,240 --> 00:15:21,800
with the passions or relating to the passions.

259
00:15:21,800 --> 00:15:24,640
Christianity is, there's so many Christianity's.

260
00:15:24,640 --> 00:15:25,640
Right.

261
00:15:25,640 --> 00:15:28,880
Well, I'm thinking for you because you left the East and came back to the West.

262
00:15:28,880 --> 00:15:29,880
Yes.

263
00:15:29,880 --> 00:15:33,880
After my 20s and that kind of vertical orientation, I gave all that up and I kind of went horizontal.

264
00:15:33,880 --> 00:15:35,240
That's how I think about it.

265
00:15:35,240 --> 00:15:40,560
I got very interested in ecology and forget the transcendent realm.

266
00:15:40,560 --> 00:15:46,440
Let's just pay attention to the forest and the way that the forest is here and all of that.

267
00:15:46,440 --> 00:15:50,640
And I spent a lot of years with my metaphysical orientation to the world was much more based

268
00:15:50,640 --> 00:15:56,080
on, oh, look, there's a Creosote bush and the Creosote bush has a subjectiveness and

269
00:15:56,080 --> 00:15:57,920
this one is wonderful to be a communion.

270
00:15:57,920 --> 00:16:03,280
But I kind of hit a wall with that about two years ago and now I'm trying to go vertical

271
00:16:03,280 --> 00:16:04,280
again.

272
00:16:04,280 --> 00:16:11,640
In this case, I'm trying to align and connect with my ancestral traditions, which are Christian.

273
00:16:11,640 --> 00:16:16,800
It's a stumbling road, but I feel called and I'm committed to trying to find a path I can

274
00:16:16,800 --> 00:16:18,040
walk on with it.

275
00:16:18,040 --> 00:16:23,160
So when you've been more horizontal and more connecting with ecology, what are some of

276
00:16:23,160 --> 00:16:27,720
the things that you're looking at in terms of relating to madness and reality?

277
00:16:27,720 --> 00:16:33,080
You said communion with the Creosote and we were talking previously about bacteria and

278
00:16:33,080 --> 00:16:39,000
sort of the questions of what consciousness might be and what reality might be.

279
00:16:39,000 --> 00:16:44,480
For instance, a lot of analyses of madness will focus on obviously you have the biological

280
00:16:44,480 --> 00:16:45,480
people.

281
00:16:45,480 --> 00:16:47,320
I call that the machine model, the medical model.

282
00:16:47,320 --> 00:16:48,320
Right.

283
00:16:48,320 --> 00:16:50,120
So we got all that and that's domineering.

284
00:16:50,120 --> 00:16:58,080
But then even the models beyond that, Prama and they can have a sociopolitical lens and

285
00:16:58,080 --> 00:17:02,840
it's still all kept in a social formation, I guess.

286
00:17:02,840 --> 00:17:08,960
I got really interested in actually the ecological reasons why certain kinds of states of consciousness

287
00:17:08,960 --> 00:17:10,480
might emerge.

288
00:17:10,480 --> 00:17:16,200
I was curious about, for instance, what we call psychosis about, why is that on the planet?

289
00:17:16,200 --> 00:17:20,560
What is that doing for the planetary organism that we live with them?

290
00:17:20,560 --> 00:17:25,040
Yeah, because if you think about it, if we are evolving beings, if we're the results

291
00:17:25,040 --> 00:17:34,600
of evolution and psychosis is merely breakdown and maladaptive and negative, why would it persist?

292
00:17:34,600 --> 00:17:35,600
That's right.

293
00:17:35,600 --> 00:17:41,920
Why does the species have a trait that is completely consistent that it has access to this thing

294
00:17:41,920 --> 00:17:43,240
called psychosis?

295
00:17:43,240 --> 00:17:47,280
It must be serving some ecological purpose function.

296
00:17:47,280 --> 00:17:53,040
It must actually contribute to the fitness of the organism from a evolutionary standpoint.

297
00:17:53,040 --> 00:17:54,600
Yeah, that's really important.

298
00:17:54,600 --> 00:17:58,520
I mean, the fact that it's a universal and historical experience says something about

299
00:17:58,520 --> 00:18:00,320
that it sort of belongs.

300
00:18:00,320 --> 00:18:04,760
I got interested with psychedelics, and as you well know, you've written beautifully

301
00:18:04,760 --> 00:18:11,160
about psychedelics, when LSD was first entering the West, people would call it psychotic,

302
00:18:11,160 --> 00:18:13,440
mimetic, that it mimics psychosis.

303
00:18:13,440 --> 00:18:17,960
Psychiatrists used to take it to try and understand the experiences of their patients and stuff.

304
00:18:17,960 --> 00:18:25,400
So, as well understood back then, what happens on LSD is a kind of experiential world that's

305
00:18:25,400 --> 00:18:31,800
close to what happens to someone who is kind of involuntarily met with a kind of psychosis.

306
00:18:31,800 --> 00:18:38,200
When I started down that trail, I started thinking, interestingly, psychedelic plants and fungi

307
00:18:38,200 --> 00:18:44,400
have been on the planet for tens of millions of years, and animals use them.

308
00:18:44,400 --> 00:18:45,400
Tell us about that.

309
00:18:45,400 --> 00:18:46,400
How?

310
00:18:46,400 --> 00:18:47,400
What did they?

311
00:18:47,400 --> 00:18:48,920
They brought animals in psychedelics.

312
00:18:48,920 --> 00:18:51,920
I mean, insects use them, animals use them.

313
00:18:51,920 --> 00:18:53,760
They use them in all kinds of different ways.

314
00:18:53,760 --> 00:18:58,920
For instance, goats will go lick a psychoactive lichen, but only when they're grieving, when

315
00:18:58,920 --> 00:19:01,440
one of their herd dies.

316
00:19:01,440 --> 00:19:04,440
Grieving goats lick psychedelic lichen?

317
00:19:04,440 --> 00:19:05,440
That's right.

318
00:19:05,440 --> 00:19:06,960
This is all over the animal kingdom.

319
00:19:06,960 --> 00:19:10,920
I mean, you got caribou with them and need a muskiria mushroom made by this and Super Mario

320
00:19:10,920 --> 00:19:12,440
brothers.

321
00:19:12,440 --> 00:19:19,400
Usually certain members of the herd will go and eat it, and these might be pioneering individuals

322
00:19:19,400 --> 00:19:24,600
within the herd in the talk I gave I was showing a video of ants who farm.

323
00:19:24,600 --> 00:19:29,800
They raise these beetles in their colonies, they're called the yellow beetle, because the

324
00:19:29,800 --> 00:19:34,000
beetle secretes out of its butt a psychoactive substance.

325
00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:38,920
They actually raise the beetle and they lick it at certain times and they actually provide

326
00:19:38,920 --> 00:19:42,640
some of the chambers that they would provide for their own kids.

327
00:19:42,640 --> 00:19:44,800
They provide for the beetles kids as well.

328
00:19:44,800 --> 00:19:47,080
So it's a symbiotic relationship.

329
00:19:47,080 --> 00:19:48,520
So the beetles get something out of it, right?

330
00:19:48,520 --> 00:19:50,520
The ants are raising them and protecting them.

331
00:19:50,520 --> 00:19:51,920
They'll go kill everything.

332
00:19:51,920 --> 00:19:56,000
And then the ants are getting it because they want the psychoactive experience.

333
00:19:56,000 --> 00:19:58,200
I knew this was going to be an interesting interview.

334
00:19:58,200 --> 00:19:59,600
You're blowing my mind already.

335
00:19:59,600 --> 00:20:02,680
So we've got plants, we've got goats.

336
00:20:02,680 --> 00:20:03,680
Yes.

337
00:20:03,680 --> 00:20:09,760
We've got ants and we've got reindeer that are purposely seeking out.

338
00:20:09,760 --> 00:20:10,920
This has been observed.

339
00:20:10,920 --> 00:20:13,400
This isn't speculative at a fish concert.

340
00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:15,080
This is actually like biology, right?

341
00:20:15,080 --> 00:20:20,960
This is for real zoology, whatever scientists, the official experts have actually confirmed

342
00:20:20,960 --> 00:20:25,840
this, that they're intentionally getting high and actually it isn't just one species.

343
00:20:25,840 --> 00:20:29,760
It's throughout nature, there are organisms that are consciously accessing psychedelic

344
00:20:29,760 --> 00:20:33,440
plants for some kind of change.

345
00:20:33,440 --> 00:20:35,440
So why, why do they do it?

346
00:20:35,440 --> 00:20:40,640
Well, if some of these plants are psychodomemetic, I think it's fair to say that they're intentionally

347
00:20:40,640 --> 00:20:44,080
inducing a kind of psychotic experience.

348
00:20:44,080 --> 00:20:49,240
This is desired for some members of some animals, but it goes beyond that.

349
00:20:49,240 --> 00:20:51,800
They're not just there for the animals, they're there for the plants.

350
00:20:51,800 --> 00:20:56,800
So let's take psilocybin, for instance, made famous by magic mushrooms.

351
00:20:56,800 --> 00:21:03,400
This is a molecule that is released by mushrooms into the mycelial, the underground fungal

352
00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:06,200
network to plants.

353
00:21:06,200 --> 00:21:10,880
Plants have serotonin receptors, which psilocybin fits into.

354
00:21:10,880 --> 00:21:12,280
Silocybin looks like serotonin.

355
00:21:12,280 --> 00:21:15,000
So serotonin is not a brain molecule.

356
00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:16,600
It's all over nature.

357
00:21:16,600 --> 00:21:18,280
It's a form of speech.

358
00:21:18,280 --> 00:21:22,400
When serotonin is released from one cell to another, they're saying something.

359
00:21:22,400 --> 00:21:23,600
It's a kind of language.

360
00:21:23,600 --> 00:21:25,920
They use other molecules, they use electricity.

361
00:21:25,920 --> 00:21:31,480
What's happening is that the mushroom is releasing the psilocybin into the underground fungal

362
00:21:31,480 --> 00:21:35,720
network, which is then getting into different grasses and plants.

363
00:21:35,720 --> 00:21:40,600
So if you take it as a given, the plants are sentient, which I do, and there's tons of evidence

364
00:21:40,600 --> 00:21:41,600
of this now.

365
00:21:41,600 --> 00:21:42,800
I don't think you need all the evidence.

366
00:21:42,800 --> 00:21:46,160
Just listen to any human being before 300 years ago.

367
00:21:46,160 --> 00:21:48,400
This is well understood.

368
00:21:48,400 --> 00:21:55,200
Then the plants are also undergoing a kind of psychosis, like, experience by tripping

369
00:21:55,200 --> 00:21:56,200
out on psilocybin.

370
00:21:56,200 --> 00:21:58,880
Still the subbing has been around for tens of millions of years.

371
00:21:58,880 --> 00:22:00,400
So why would this happen?

372
00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:04,320
Interestingly, with psilocybin, specifically, where does that often show up?

373
00:22:04,320 --> 00:22:08,000
It often shows up in disturbed ecosystems.

374
00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:13,160
So a forest has gone through a trauma, and now it's a kind of grassland where everything

375
00:22:13,160 --> 00:22:14,400
is different.

376
00:22:14,400 --> 00:22:17,160
And that's where those mushrooms often show up.

377
00:22:17,160 --> 00:22:21,160
Now this isn't the case for all psychoactive plants, but this is an interesting example.

378
00:22:21,160 --> 00:22:26,640
So psilocybin shows up in the disturbed ecosystem, goes to the plants.

379
00:22:26,640 --> 00:22:31,920
I think, and I think there's convincing evidence of this, what it's doing when it goes into

380
00:22:31,920 --> 00:22:38,640
a plant is it's breaking down the habits of the plant and brain science and psychedelics

381
00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:43,040
they call this a default mode network, but that's all that's problematic.

382
00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:47,680
It's a similar process where what you're doing is you're shaking things up.

383
00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:49,360
Anyone has taken psilocybin understand this.

384
00:22:49,360 --> 00:22:52,680
I mean, you go through an experience where things are shook up.

385
00:22:52,680 --> 00:22:56,760
Your senses, your sensory life, it's more amplified.

386
00:22:56,760 --> 00:23:01,120
Suddenly, you smell colors, things come in, all this kind of stuff, so the plants, their

387
00:23:01,120 --> 00:23:06,120
senses are more open, and why would you want that so that you can create new behavioral

388
00:23:06,120 --> 00:23:09,960
patterns to adapt to the circumstance?

389
00:23:09,960 --> 00:23:11,880
I mean, that's a physicalist explanation.

390
00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:16,240
I also just think these things are meant to open us up to transcendental forces.

391
00:23:16,240 --> 00:23:20,200
Okay, so we've got goats that are licking lichens when they grieve.

392
00:23:20,200 --> 00:23:26,840
We've got reindeer that are eating amineetam scaria and we've got ants that are cultivating

393
00:23:26,840 --> 00:23:32,480
symbiotically this relationship with beetles so that they can harvest this psychedelic.

394
00:23:32,480 --> 00:23:38,720
We start to think of those are individuals that are seeking some use of the psychedelic

395
00:23:38,720 --> 00:23:43,680
substance, but you're saying that actually a mushroom that has psilocybin in it isn't

396
00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:49,680
just kind of producing this intoxicant that then another organism finds useful, like

397
00:23:49,680 --> 00:23:52,080
poison that's helpful to humans.

398
00:23:52,080 --> 00:23:54,480
It's like a byproduct of the mushroom.

399
00:23:54,480 --> 00:24:00,640
You're saying that actually the mushroom is producing psilocybin because it's a way that

400
00:24:00,640 --> 00:24:06,120
the entire plant habitat is communicating with each other and that they're communicating

401
00:24:06,120 --> 00:24:10,360
with each other because they have certain kinds of needs from an ecological standpoint to

402
00:24:10,360 --> 00:24:16,160
kind of shake up something that needs to be disrupted because that habit or that stuck

403
00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:20,800
place, let's say, needs to find some way of opening out beyond itself.

404
00:24:20,800 --> 00:24:25,600
I'm thinking about, I know very little about ecology or farming or gardening, but I do

405
00:24:25,600 --> 00:24:31,280
know that apparently like if you have an area of the earth that has been poisoned, that

406
00:24:31,280 --> 00:24:36,800
certain plants will be attracted to that area because they process the poison and they can

407
00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:38,480
slowly start to regenerate.

408
00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:39,480
That's right.

409
00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:43,560
They can leach out certain heavy metals or certain kinds of toxins.

410
00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:47,680
And so there's a balancing, it sounds like you're saying is psychedelics are also playing

411
00:24:47,680 --> 00:24:52,600
that kind of role on the plant level, not just on the level of rain deers and goats and

412
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:54,520
ants, but on the plant level.

413
00:24:54,520 --> 00:24:55,520
That's right.

414
00:24:55,520 --> 00:25:00,000
And they're providing something that the ecosystem needs in order to reestablish its balance.

415
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:05,640
And the way that they're doing it is that the psychedelics shake up or they open up or

416
00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:12,400
they move beyond some kind of limited repetitive impasse that the ecosystem is that.

417
00:25:12,400 --> 00:25:13,920
Am I following you?

418
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:15,400
Yeah, I think so.

419
00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:20,720
All these kinds of ways of looking at it always feel a bit limited, but I think that's right.

420
00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:25,320
And you know, psilocybin was very likely invented by bacteria.

421
00:25:25,320 --> 00:25:29,120
So bacteria, the ultimate chemists, they're amazing.

422
00:25:29,120 --> 00:25:31,240
And they swap genes and all this kind of stuff.

423
00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:33,760
You know, they're communicating, they're working colonies.

424
00:25:33,760 --> 00:25:39,600
They fix the planet to make the planet a place where animals could emerge, for instance.

425
00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:43,280
And they've been doing that for billions of years, and they invented the psilocybin.

426
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:48,280
And to the extent that mushrooms took it up, you know, it's sort of donated from the little

427
00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:56,080
creatures who are on the planet, you know, perpetuating ever more glorious forms of creaturely

428
00:25:56,080 --> 00:25:57,240
life.

429
00:25:57,240 --> 00:26:04,400
So I think to make an analogy then, psychosis can arrive for an individual when there is

430
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:07,320
a need to shake things up to reorganize.

431
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:10,560
I don't think it should just be thought of as an individual level.

432
00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:13,200
I mean, you think about this with like the dream world.

433
00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:16,160
Dreams arrive at an individual level.

434
00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:19,400
And we often treat them as like individual development tools, right?

435
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:25,760
Like I'm going to go discover the capital S self, but actually there's cultures who in

436
00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:30,600
the morning, they come together and they all bring their dreams, right, to the circle

437
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:35,760
because dreams are seen as providing insight or guidance for the whole.

438
00:26:35,760 --> 00:26:37,920
Yeah, they don't belong to an individual.

439
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:41,880
They're shared because the dream is for everyone because you're living collectively.

440
00:26:41,880 --> 00:26:47,840
Coming from creator, we're constantly being called towards something at the species level.

441
00:26:47,840 --> 00:26:50,840
And that's a sort of transcendent end.

442
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:54,120
And that that guidance shows up in things like dreams.

443
00:26:54,120 --> 00:26:59,240
So with something like psychosis, if I take it from that plant world, I would say that for

444
00:26:59,240 --> 00:27:02,800
some people, not for everybody, I mean, you can't make generalizations about all this

445
00:27:02,800 --> 00:27:03,880
stuff.

446
00:27:03,880 --> 00:27:11,600
It arrives at a point at which a person needs a kind of complete reorganization of psychic

447
00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:13,200
content.

448
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:15,520
And that could also benefit the community.

449
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:17,160
It might not.

450
00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:22,800
And when it arrives, it's not like the endpoint is built in that all is going to go well.

451
00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:27,320
It can be a complete hellscape because your senses are wide open and things are coming

452
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:29,360
through and you're trying to make sense of them.

453
00:27:29,360 --> 00:27:32,400
And that can be very confusing if you don't have elders.

454
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:38,160
It often makes something like psychosis so traumatic is the kind of loneliness of it and the

455
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:40,560
isolation from it.

456
00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:46,960
So I think the process itself has an ecological function, but that doesn't romanticize it

457
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:52,760
into, oh, it's meant to lead to a particular outcome where all is well.

458
00:27:52,760 --> 00:27:55,720
It can also lead to a complete collapse.

459
00:27:55,720 --> 00:28:00,760
Well, part of it is that when we're speaking of psychosis, having evolutionary significance

460
00:28:00,760 --> 00:28:04,360
or evolutionary necessity, the species needs it.

461
00:28:04,360 --> 00:28:05,680
That's why it persists.

462
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:07,680
We're speaking on very large timescale.

463
00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:08,680
Yes.

464
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:10,280
A very large aggregates of individuals.

465
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:14,720
So an individual experience may be at variance with that.

466
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:19,400
It may be very not useful for an individual just because the usefulness is that we're speaking

467
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:21,080
about is the larger scale.

468
00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:26,280
At the same time, it's very instructive because it's going to have to be useful overall

469
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:28,000
or else it wouldn't keep happening.

470
00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:29,000
That's right.

471
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:30,520
An increasing actually.

472
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:31,800
An increasing, okay.

473
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:37,840
So what I'm thinking about is that there's a lot of social psychological models of psychosis

474
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:43,280
where like the double-bind theory, for example, that basically someone is at an impasse.

475
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:45,280
There's something strange happening.

476
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:51,720
There's a kind of a captivity or a trap or a limitation that the person can't manage

477
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:58,920
or comprehend or even speak about or even reflect on in the ordinary way that's available.

478
00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:05,360
So boom, here comes psychosis as like a fourth-dimensional solution to a three-dimensional problem.

479
00:29:05,360 --> 00:29:09,560
It's like a way of just jumping out of the circumstance.

480
00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:10,560
Yes.

481
00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:17,480
In a desperate, kind of chaotic way that nonetheless creates the possibility for completely unexpected

482
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:22,400
resources to come and something completely new because what's available isn't going to

483
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:23,400
work.

484
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:27,400
So boom, the person goes into a psychosis in order to find something.

485
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:32,000
And the most classic example would be a secret that's not acknowledged in the family.

486
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:33,440
The secret is not being acknowledged.

487
00:29:33,440 --> 00:29:34,960
No one's willing to do it.

488
00:29:34,960 --> 00:29:40,080
And so the person becomes the identified patient as a way of kind of sounding alarm.

489
00:29:40,080 --> 00:29:45,640
So there's like a healing purpose or a compensating or way of addressing a problem.

490
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:49,280
But on the outside, we don't even know what the problem is because often the person can't

491
00:29:49,280 --> 00:29:50,280
communicate.

492
00:29:50,280 --> 00:29:52,160
They don't even know what the problem is.

493
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:56,720
But if we think about psychosis from an evolutionary standpoint, we think, okay, this is actually

494
00:29:56,720 --> 00:30:02,160
a capacity that humans have as a way of jumping out of the system.

495
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:03,160
Right.

496
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:07,520
When everything is lost, when there's no way out, your mind will go to these extreme states

497
00:30:07,520 --> 00:30:12,800
as a desperate attempt to kind of reorganize on a different level using a completely different

498
00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:13,800
set of frameworks.

499
00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:14,800
Yes.

500
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:15,800
I love all that.

501
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:20,680
And I think at a physical list level, you're getting more sensory information because, for

502
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:23,760
instance, the brain, I don't think it's like a movie projector.

503
00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:27,960
I think it's more out-of-huxley called a reducing valve.

504
00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:28,960
It's always filtering.

505
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:31,760
There's a lot of reality out there.

506
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:40,640
And the brain is this kind of super sophisticated creature that is intended to filter out things.

507
00:30:40,640 --> 00:30:43,000
And so, and that's called sensory gating.

508
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:46,400
It's always gating what's coming in through the symptoms.

509
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:51,200
At the kind of physical level, this psychosis thing is the gates aren't so shut.

510
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:54,000
So there's more information coming in.

511
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:56,400
Again, not to say as a good thing.

512
00:30:56,400 --> 00:30:59,320
It just seems to me that that's the case at that moment.

513
00:30:59,320 --> 00:31:00,320
Yeah.

514
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:04,840
But from the evolutionary standpoint, if the gates are closed and things are going well for

515
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:09,120
the organism or for the community, then the gates are going to stay closed.

516
00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:10,120
Yes.

517
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:15,280
But then if something happens like the goat loses its goat buddy and now it's grieving,

518
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:19,440
the gates that were closed before were working when there was no grief, but now you've got

519
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:20,440
grief.

520
00:31:20,440 --> 00:31:23,000
And now the goat needs to open the gates.

521
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:24,000
Right.

522
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:26,600
Because the resources that were working suddenly aren't working.

523
00:31:26,600 --> 00:31:27,600
So we got to open the gates.

524
00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:28,800
We got to go beyond.

525
00:31:28,800 --> 00:31:29,800
Yeah.

526
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:31,800
And then bring in something from the outside.

527
00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:32,800
Yes.

528
00:31:32,800 --> 00:31:33,800
Yes.

529
00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:40,320
And that this is all part of a design in my view in which life is not some random sort of meaningless

530
00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:42,280
billiard bars just bouncing around.

531
00:31:42,280 --> 00:31:46,160
But even at a species level, we're being called.

532
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:51,000
And this is all part of the pulling towards that kind of transcendent end.

533
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:53,280
This is part of the process of doing that.

534
00:31:53,280 --> 00:31:58,840
When you say transcendent end from an ecological standpoint, is it maybe sufficient to say that

535
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:05,480
life has an intrinsic drive to be more complex and more intricate and more expressive and

536
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:10,800
more unique because the longer that life exists, it doesn't just survive because you could

537
00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:15,840
survive by just being ice and then you just survive and being inert.

538
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:24,000
But you survive through becoming more and more differentiated, more complex, more individual,

539
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:25,000
more unique.

540
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:27,560
This is what Jung called the individuation process.

541
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:32,840
I mean, obviously Jung is very individualistic and well, I read Jung as a very ecological thinker

542
00:32:32,840 --> 00:32:38,200
because there's a way in which the forces of nature are working through the psyche and

543
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:42,880
they're working in exactly the same way and it's survival, yes, but it's also expression

544
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:43,880
of uniqueness.

545
00:32:43,880 --> 00:32:44,880
Yes.

546
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:47,800
And that's constantly what organisms are moving towards.

547
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:48,800
Yeah.

548
00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:50,800
It's more glorious forms of expression.

549
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:54,200
I mean, an ostrich is a glorious creature.

550
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:55,560
So is a bacteria.

551
00:32:55,560 --> 00:32:59,600
I guess, you know, one way I would think about this, I think the transcendent ends.

552
00:32:59,600 --> 00:33:04,760
I mean, I sort of like the old philosophical formulation of this being the good, the beautiful

553
00:33:04,760 --> 00:33:06,200
and the true.

554
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:10,600
But creatures are being drawn to the good, the beautiful and the true.

555
00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:16,360
So insofar as we have innate drives, these are being sort of pulled from the transcendent

556
00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:17,840
and try to be pulled out of us.

557
00:33:17,840 --> 00:33:20,960
But I think that's applicable to all creatures.

558
00:33:20,960 --> 00:33:26,200
So when you're asked about the ecological thing, in my view, Earth is a creature and we

559
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:31,040
have every reasonably that, biomes, forests, or creatures at the forest level.

560
00:33:31,040 --> 00:33:36,040
And Earth is also part of the drive towards a good, beautiful and true.

561
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:37,040
So it was the sun.

562
00:33:37,040 --> 00:33:40,480
So the transcendent, in this is one of the problems I have with Christianity.

563
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:43,200
Sometimes it skips all the intermediary layers.

564
00:33:43,200 --> 00:33:44,640
It's just humans than God.

565
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:49,280
And I'm thinking, well, actually, we're also part of this glorious planet who is also part

566
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:51,520
of God and part of a solar system.

567
00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:55,240
And all of it is sort of being pulled towards a kind of end.

568
00:33:55,240 --> 00:34:01,000
Yeah, because I think the fault that has been made in consciousness studies has been

569
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:04,680
to think that it's humans that have it and other organisms don't.

570
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:08,640
Or is actually the more that we're learning about the origins of language, the more that

571
00:34:08,640 --> 00:34:14,920
we're learning about the complex intelligence of corvids or orca whales and the communication

572
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:19,160
in the language and the culture and the learning and even the passing down.

573
00:34:19,160 --> 00:34:23,160
We're actually seeing that consciousness is kind of more this gradient that we have

574
00:34:23,160 --> 00:34:28,360
it, but other organisms, other animals may have it, maybe in a different way than us.

575
00:34:28,360 --> 00:34:33,320
But we've all kind of got the same thing, which makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint.

576
00:34:33,320 --> 00:34:36,120
We don't have nature without consciousness.

577
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:40,680
And then suddenly God sends a lightning bolt and then boom, now consciousness exists in

578
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:41,680
humans.

579
00:34:41,680 --> 00:34:42,680
That's right.

580
00:34:42,680 --> 00:34:47,720
And consciousness was built into the directionality of it as a potential from the very beginning.

581
00:34:47,720 --> 00:34:51,720
And Nome Chomsky said something really interesting about evolution because I think he was asked

582
00:34:51,720 --> 00:34:58,600
whether he was a creationist or not, whether he thought that God had intended there to be

583
00:34:58,600 --> 00:35:04,320
intelligence or whether it just emerged purely accidentally through evolution.

584
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:10,520
And he said that actually maybe consciousness is built in to the structure of the universe,

585
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:16,000
the way that the complexity of the lattice of a crystal structure in a mineral is just

586
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:17,000
built in.

587
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:23,200
There's a mathematics to a crystal that just emerges because it was built into the chemistry

588
00:35:23,200 --> 00:35:25,640
or gravity is something that just seems to be built in.

589
00:35:25,640 --> 00:35:28,680
We don't say what causes gravity, gravity is built in.

590
00:35:28,680 --> 00:35:33,560
So maybe consciousness is sort of like gravity or the complexity of emergent properties

591
00:35:33,560 --> 00:35:37,240
of chemical structure because it's just a condition.

592
00:35:37,240 --> 00:35:42,760
We don't have to explain it by the existence of a prior or more fundamental cause.

593
00:35:42,760 --> 00:35:48,160
And then we create all these problems about how it's sort of like created out of nothing.

594
00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:50,440
Actually, it's built into the system.

595
00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:57,060
It's built into existence, you know, every culture, every history, every story has always been

596
00:35:57,060 --> 00:36:01,440
plants are sentient, animals are sentient, everything is sentient.

597
00:36:01,440 --> 00:36:03,960
And to me that seems to be the fundamental truth.

598
00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:10,240
It's an intuitive truth that you can experience, but then the mechanistic view that says, well,

599
00:36:10,240 --> 00:36:12,040
where does it come from?

600
00:36:12,040 --> 00:36:13,040
Kind of creates this impasse.

601
00:36:13,040 --> 00:36:17,040
Well, actually it comes from everything.

602
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:20,440
And when you're asking, where does it come from, you're actually using consciousness as the

603
00:36:20,440 --> 00:36:22,800
question, there's no getting behind consciousness.

604
00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:23,800
Right.

605
00:36:23,800 --> 00:36:24,800
It's just part of the whole thing.

606
00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:25,800
That's right.

607
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:29,240
And then you ask, well, what causes or how you define it, you create these intellectual

608
00:36:29,240 --> 00:36:33,480
impasses, these language games that just destroy your ability to think about it.

609
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:34,480
Yeah.

610
00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:38,480
And I would say sort of an animist in the sense that I would think that consciousness is

611
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:39,480
an all matter.

612
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:42,160
So it's an atoms and everything.

613
00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:44,800
It might be very slow consciousness or very fast.

614
00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:47,560
It's hard for us to recognize it as consciousness.

615
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:48,880
That might be a kind of wisdom.

616
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:53,760
If we think of the brain and nervous system and human beings as being an architecture that

617
00:36:53,760 --> 00:36:58,640
reduces reality, it may turn out the bacteria actually have way more access to reality than

618
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:03,360
we do because we've got all these filtering mechanisms or dynamisms.

619
00:37:03,360 --> 00:37:09,080
We look at trees have been around for hundreds of millions of years and they're slow, they're

620
00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:11,480
still, they make weather.

621
00:37:11,480 --> 00:37:13,320
They do extraordinary things.

622
00:37:13,320 --> 00:37:15,920
Maybe slowness is the wisdom.

623
00:37:15,920 --> 00:37:18,000
We're sort of the new creatures running around.

624
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:20,040
There's nothing superior or inferior.

625
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:26,040
It's just different, but we're caught in the framework of the 80 plus years of life.

626
00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:31,360
And so we have a certain speed that we can recognize something that seems like us.

627
00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:35,360
And there we say, then it has consciousness because it behaves and acts like this.

628
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:40,840
I wanted to get back to this question of psychedelics because yes, the goat is licking

629
00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:42,880
the liken and getting high.

630
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:48,080
And yes, the reindeer is eating the aminita muscaria mushroom.

631
00:37:48,080 --> 00:37:52,520
And yes, the ant is harvesting the psychedelic from the beetle.

632
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:59,560
But there's something missing in that experience because in the human use of psychedelics, there

633
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:09,120
is an incredibly elaborate mediation by ceremony, ritual, language, expectation, symbol, social

634
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:12,600
constructiveness of the psychedelic experience.

635
00:38:12,600 --> 00:38:18,360
And then when we get into psychedelics as therapy or psychedelics as healing, which is the

636
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:22,600
discourse that come out, it just is psychedelics in the brain.

637
00:38:22,600 --> 00:38:25,000
We're going to shake up the default mode network.

638
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:26,520
You're going to have some new ideas.

639
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:30,880
We're not even going to think about the social constructiveness of the psychedelic experience.

640
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:36,720
And that I think is the real problem with ironically, the substances that for many people

641
00:38:36,720 --> 00:38:43,360
give access to these incredible metaphysical, existential, transcendent, visionary understandings

642
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:50,480
of consciousness have been just turned into this super reductionistic, biological, mechanistic

643
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:56,200
framework in order to offer it as a new form of psychiatric drug for healing and marketing.

644
00:38:56,200 --> 00:38:59,640
I mean, listen, you've been a voice in the wilderness.

645
00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:01,040
They're calling attention to this.

646
00:39:01,040 --> 00:39:03,000
You've actually really deeply influenced me.

647
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:07,680
I did a lot of psychedelics when I was younger, but then I kind of put it aside for a long

648
00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:12,160
time because I wasn't living in places where people were talking like that.

649
00:39:12,160 --> 00:39:17,600
And when it started to emerge again and I experiment with psychedelics again, apart from my auto

650
00:39:17,600 --> 00:39:20,080
immune stuff, I was trying to communicate with bacteria.

651
00:39:20,080 --> 00:39:21,080
How did that go?

652
00:39:21,080 --> 00:39:24,080
My use of psychedelics right now is I'm very careful.

653
00:39:24,080 --> 00:39:28,560
I'm not going into the kind of altered state where I think that it would be possible to

654
00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:31,440
receive some kind of communication.

655
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:35,880
I'm not going to the places I think that perhaps I would need to go.

656
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:39,680
So I got excited when all of it kind of entered the cultural scene again.

657
00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:41,840
And I sort of did the naive thinking.

658
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:47,960
And then your writing has been really important to me to call out how all of this stuff is going

659
00:39:47,960 --> 00:39:50,480
to get filtered through the systems that we got.

660
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:54,240
But Stephen, I hope I wasn't a buzzkill that started to discourage you from getting

661
00:39:54,240 --> 00:39:56,040
high on psychedelics.

662
00:39:56,040 --> 00:39:59,000
You are the best kind of buzzkill because you're so right.

663
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:00,080
No, there's a direction.

664
00:40:00,080 --> 00:40:03,200
This is all going and I feel like it's unstoppable.

665
00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:05,040
This is the way all this stuff does.

666
00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:10,800
I mean, look at 10, 15 years ago in mental health, trying to talk about trauma was still radical.

667
00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:14,480
I went and I looked at the materials on the National Institute of Health in the United

668
00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:15,480
States.

669
00:40:15,480 --> 00:40:17,280
It's good to find the hundreds of pages.

670
00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:20,880
And I put control at find the word trauma zero.

671
00:40:20,880 --> 00:40:23,400
Now trauma is a big part of the discourse.

672
00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:24,400
So what's happening?

673
00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:27,600
It's just getting sucked right into the machine model.

674
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:28,600
Trauma is over.

675
00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:30,000
Trauma is machine model now.

676
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,160
And listen to the words like, oh, trauma is stored in your body.

677
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:34,680
That's a computer metaphor.

678
00:40:34,680 --> 00:40:35,680
You're dysregulated.

679
00:40:35,680 --> 00:40:37,880
You have to re-regulate your system.

680
00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:38,880
That's right.

681
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:43,480
Or you have automatic, the word automatic response is fight, flight, freeze, parasympathetic

682
00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:44,960
nervous system.

683
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:47,120
Machine metaphor, pure machine metaphor.

684
00:40:47,120 --> 00:40:48,120
Yes.

685
00:40:48,120 --> 00:40:50,680
So psychedelics says where they're going.

686
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:55,080
And then we'll need a whole other movement to try and bring them back to something.

687
00:40:55,080 --> 00:40:56,600
But I mean, sometimes I think about this.

688
00:40:56,600 --> 00:41:01,440
Listen, if you live in a culture that violates the law of the land, what you take from the

689
00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:04,520
land, you have to get back in kind in some way.

690
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:11,120
If a culture is violating that, then everything else that comes from that is going to be deluded

691
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:13,160
and misguided in a way.

692
00:41:13,160 --> 00:41:16,640
I mean, you can always find examples of like, what's great that psychedelics are being

693
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:21,840
used for people with chronic depression or whatever, because it helps 60% of them or whatever.

694
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:25,320
I mean, one, it's just not what they're deliberately here on the planet for.

695
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:27,720
I'm really glad that it helps some individuals.

696
00:41:27,720 --> 00:41:32,840
But we can't use that as a way of thinking about how we interface with nature like, oh, we'll

697
00:41:32,840 --> 00:41:37,080
just take this molecule from the plant, we'll patent it, we'll give it to someone with

698
00:41:37,080 --> 00:41:41,560
a diagnosis, and they'll be better so they can function better in society.

699
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:45,440
It's just completely off course, the whole purpose, I think.

700
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:51,960
Yeah, and the motivation of the machine in terms of making money and status and power is so

701
00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:54,320
overwhelming.

702
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:58,600
But I wanted to get back to this question of communicating with bacteria.

703
00:41:58,600 --> 00:42:04,920
Because you could say that, okay, the imaginal realm like dreams or imagination come from

704
00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:10,240
the psyche, but you could also say that when you have a dream, bacteria are communicating

705
00:42:10,240 --> 00:42:11,480
with you through the dream.

706
00:42:11,480 --> 00:42:12,480
That's right.

707
00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:17,440
It's a ensemble of organisms that we live inside of this giant conversation.

708
00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:24,280
This incredibly elaborate, complex conversation, and we're stuffing our fingers in our ears.

709
00:42:24,280 --> 00:42:26,520
Yeah.

710
00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:31,440
And so someone like young comes along or indigenous practices or prayer or whatever it is.

711
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:36,360
And they said, hey, open, take your finger out of your ear and the way that it comes through,

712
00:42:36,360 --> 00:42:41,760
the way that the conversations, the dialogue starts to happen is through imagination.

713
00:42:41,760 --> 00:42:47,640
It's through dreams, it's through visionary states, it's through inspiration, it's through

714
00:42:47,640 --> 00:42:49,120
ideas.

715
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:54,560
But really what that is is that's the conversation getting through of the other organisms.

716
00:42:54,560 --> 00:42:55,560
Yes.

717
00:42:55,560 --> 00:42:57,840
The other organisms are communicating with you.

718
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:03,320
And so in a strange way, we could say that if you want to use psychedelics to open to

719
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:08,840
the conversation, you could also use psychosis to open to the conversation.

720
00:43:08,840 --> 00:43:14,560
Or you could also use like 10% psychosis like altered states or some kind of like trying

721
00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:19,200
something, putting yourself under stress or putting yourself into a situation.

722
00:43:19,200 --> 00:43:24,320
It's going to shake up your consciousness and break some of those gates down and open

723
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:30,800
up some of that information flow, like 10% of psychosis that the basic, the principle underlying

724
00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:37,480
both is the same that we want to somehow restore this dialogue and this conversation by

725
00:43:37,480 --> 00:43:42,280
allowing some of the information that we're pushing out to start to come in and then get

726
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:49,480
us out of those routine habits of thinking and behavior that are stuck and an impasse

727
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:51,640
and that are leaving us trapped.

728
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:56,960
So fundamentally, whether it's psychosis or psychedelics or some other means, the whole

729
00:43:56,960 --> 00:44:03,320
point is to get out of our ruts of thinking like the goat or the reindeer or the ant are

730
00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:08,360
getting out of and welcome in something new, which is the ensemble of conversation because

731
00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:09,680
it has so much wisdom.

732
00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:10,680
Yes.

733
00:44:10,680 --> 00:44:14,360
The bacteria are looking at us and they're saying, "Guys, you just need to do this."

734
00:44:14,360 --> 00:44:17,040
We're trying to talk to you.

735
00:44:17,040 --> 00:44:18,040
We're trying to talk to you.

736
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:19,040
We just need to do this.

737
00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:20,800
I want to tell you a really quick story.

738
00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:25,240
There's a sort of a science fiction writer, Whitley Streber, who wrote about communication

739
00:44:25,240 --> 00:44:26,240
with aliens.

740
00:44:26,240 --> 00:44:27,240
He was very popular in the 90s.

741
00:44:27,240 --> 00:44:28,240
I don't know where he is.

742
00:44:28,240 --> 00:44:32,880
Now, he had all these interactions with extraterrestrials, but they never communicated

743
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:33,880
with him.

744
00:44:33,880 --> 00:44:37,680
He would see them or they would show up or different things would happen.

745
00:44:37,680 --> 00:44:45,760
But there was one time when the ET's gave him some communication, they gave him some advice,

746
00:44:45,760 --> 00:44:49,000
and they said, "Stop eating sugar."

747
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:52,480
That's hilarious.

748
00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:58,840
So maybe the bacteria have some kind of simple message, like get off the corn syrup people,

749
00:44:58,840 --> 00:45:01,520
like get down your phones.

750
00:45:01,520 --> 00:45:02,520
It's not hard.

751
00:45:02,520 --> 00:45:05,600
Just get away from electromagnetic radiation.

752
00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:09,280
You'll be able to think clearly and then you'll be able to have better ideas.

753
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:10,280
Yes.

754
00:45:10,280 --> 00:45:11,280
Get into nature more.

755
00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:16,000
I mean, sometimes the wisdom is so simple, but we're just not listening to it.

756
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:17,000
That's right.

757
00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:21,960
I've often thought about in terms of that ensemble of conversation that most theories of

758
00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:28,640
mind in the West at least, they're developed in urban or in places where philosophers

759
00:45:28,640 --> 00:45:31,760
are sitting in a room that's cut off from the communion.

760
00:45:31,760 --> 00:45:33,800
I've thought about the differences.

761
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:38,160
If you grow up in an old growth forest and you're thinking about consciousness in the forest,

762
00:45:38,160 --> 00:45:43,520
you're actually part of a communion that's going to help bring about ideas that are probably

763
00:45:43,520 --> 00:45:45,400
more accurately reflective.

764
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:49,880
We have all the philosophy so much of it is just this abstract intellectual masturbation.

765
00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:53,920
It's just chasing its tail and stuff and all these concepts that refer to more concepts

766
00:45:53,920 --> 00:45:55,040
and more kind of stuff.

767
00:45:55,040 --> 00:46:00,120
This kind of stuff, and I think part of that is just a product of cultures living without

768
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:03,960
not being rooted in the kind of communion of species.

769
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:08,040
But yeah, I think that shouting that you're talking about of other species wanting us to

770
00:46:08,040 --> 00:46:15,000
hear would also be a part of why things like psychosis would be increasing in the planets,

771
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:17,760
telos and the directionality of the planet.

772
00:46:17,760 --> 00:46:22,360
I don't want to denigrate the fact that there's all kinds of other variables here, like plastics

773
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:24,200
in the water.

774
00:46:24,200 --> 00:46:29,760
Also the increase of psychosis isn't necessarily a pathological influence like trauma, but

775
00:46:29,760 --> 00:46:34,000
actually the increase of psychosis might be the organism trying to find wisdom that the

776
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:38,280
increase of psychosis is actually a search for solutions outside of the box.

777
00:46:38,280 --> 00:46:39,520
Maybe at a meta level.

778
00:46:39,520 --> 00:46:40,520
Yeah.

779
00:46:40,520 --> 00:46:45,320
I think at an individual level, I mean trauma is so obviously vital for a lot of people's

780
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:50,240
kind of narrative of how they came to have different states of consciousness.

781
00:46:50,240 --> 00:46:53,040
When I was a kid, I was probably born very sensitive.

782
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:59,760
But then after going through some traumatic experiences, I started watching off her things.

783
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:04,520
My senses, and that's a double-edged shore, maybe I could hear music different than someone

784
00:47:04,520 --> 00:47:09,160
else, but also I used to sit out in the hallway thinking I was going to be murdered and just

785
00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:13,800
listen for hours, any sound, call a police, that kind of thing.

786
00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:16,880
My senses were more open.

787
00:47:16,880 --> 00:47:22,880
What happens when your senses are open like that is the energy of your system is diverting

788
00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:28,120
more resources towards that aim and less towards say digestion.

789
00:47:28,120 --> 00:47:30,280
So I had all kinds of stomach problems.

790
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:34,000
When I was a kid, a lot of people do, my energy is focused towards other things, watching

791
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:35,000
out.

792
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:37,720
I had a lot of stomach problems when I was, you know, this is interesting.

793
00:47:37,720 --> 00:47:43,280
Yeah, and if you're not digesting properly, then you can start to get all kinds of bacterial

794
00:47:43,280 --> 00:47:45,360
overgrace and imbalances.

795
00:47:45,360 --> 00:47:50,280
So that can then bilaterally then influence your consciousness because bacteria caught

796
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:51,280
up with that.

797
00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:55,640
So there's a way in which trauma obviously has a huge influence, but it can think of it

798
00:47:55,640 --> 00:47:59,000
in biophysical ways with bacteria and all kinds of organisms in your body.

799
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:01,880
How all of that is just that play.

800
00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:08,920
Social experience of harm being done to you will then change the kind of ecology of microorganisms

801
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:09,920
with it.

802
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:10,920
It can, right?

803
00:48:10,920 --> 00:48:16,560
And then all of that's tied up in a planet who also has drives towards things.

804
00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:19,000
Yeah, a planet in a sense is being traumatized.

805
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:22,080
It's having this huge inflection.

806
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:27,360
The biological determinism is used as a hammer to just say, oh no, it's not trauma.

807
00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:29,360
It's not changing your relationships.

808
00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:30,680
It's not psychological.

809
00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:32,800
It's not anything that's accessible.

810
00:48:32,800 --> 00:48:35,160
It's just broken genes and broken brain.

811
00:48:35,160 --> 00:48:36,840
So you got to take the pills.

812
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:38,160
That was the equation.

813
00:48:38,160 --> 00:48:40,960
And now I think we've got much more sophisticated with genetics.

814
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:44,000
We're able to say, okay, genetics are not just a blueprint.

815
00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:45,680
There's an epigenetic relationship.

816
00:48:45,680 --> 00:48:47,760
The genes turn on and turn off.

817
00:48:47,760 --> 00:48:49,240
They get activated.

818
00:48:49,240 --> 00:48:54,560
They're deactivated basically in response to environment that genes can actually be turned

819
00:48:54,560 --> 00:48:59,000
on and then acquired through environmental influences, intergenerationaly.

820
00:48:59,000 --> 00:49:02,800
And then we've got a lot more sophisticated around the role of stress, the way in which

821
00:49:02,800 --> 00:49:07,960
the traumatic injury, a psychological condition can affect the way that you're processing food.

822
00:49:07,960 --> 00:49:11,160
Now suddenly your digestion and your gut is changed.

823
00:49:11,160 --> 00:49:17,360
And so we've kind of gotten away from this strict either or either it's biological or psychological

824
00:49:17,360 --> 00:49:18,360
framing of things.

825
00:49:18,360 --> 00:49:23,120
And I think that's a very positive direction as long as we don't get too lost going back

826
00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:27,840
to a biological determinism because people do have such a sophisticated holistic health

827
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:29,760
understanding these days.

828
00:49:29,760 --> 00:49:35,200
But I see lots of people who are just suffering tremendously diagnosed with psychosis and they

829
00:49:35,200 --> 00:49:38,000
may have huge family resources.

830
00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:43,720
They're trying all kinds of supplements and treatments and holistic this and food solution

831
00:49:43,720 --> 00:49:46,560
this and it's just not helping them at all.

832
00:49:46,560 --> 00:49:50,960
So it's clearly more complicated than going back to a biological reductionism.

833
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:55,480
But I think that we do need to get more sophisticated because I mean I feel like my changes

834
00:49:55,480 --> 00:50:01,320
in nutrition and it sounds like for you, my changes in nutrition were crucial for getting

835
00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:04,320
me back into some kind of base of clarity.

836
00:50:04,320 --> 00:50:06,120
Oh, this is stunning for me.

837
00:50:06,120 --> 00:50:10,280
But then also you can sort of say, well, why did I have the discipline or the interest or

838
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:13,760
the motivation to make those nutrition changes?

839
00:50:13,760 --> 00:50:18,360
And then maybe that itself is an empowerment attitude that I had a psychological change.

840
00:50:18,360 --> 00:50:19,920
They got me interested.

841
00:50:19,920 --> 00:50:24,160
And you know, an idea of nourishment as being self-care and a relationship with your parents

842
00:50:24,160 --> 00:50:28,200
and family origin and nourishing yourself and connecting with yourself.

843
00:50:28,200 --> 00:50:33,400
But I think it would be a big mistake for us to go purely in a psychological determinist

844
00:50:33,400 --> 00:50:38,480
direction around psychosis because we are physical organisms and the psychological and the

845
00:50:38,480 --> 00:50:40,840
biological are so closely related.

846
00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:41,840
Yes.

847
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:45,000
And inside of all that is the kind of spiritual aims.

848
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:49,840
You know, if it's not random, then there has to be a kind of framing of intentionality

849
00:50:49,840 --> 00:50:50,840
between everything.

850
00:50:50,840 --> 00:50:52,160
This is not just about survival reproduction.

851
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:57,920
I mean, this is my problem with epigenetics still treats the gene as central and you know,

852
00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:00,440
genes make amino acids that are folded in the protein.

853
00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:06,120
Okay, well, the whole folding process and transcription, what is causing that?

854
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:11,640
And they've been saying for like, oh, it has to be the genes have built into their four molecules,

855
00:51:11,640 --> 00:51:12,640
the direction.

856
00:51:12,640 --> 00:51:15,960
And I'm much more partial to people like Ruber's Childrake who talk about morphogenetic

857
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:16,960
fields.

858
00:51:16,960 --> 00:51:21,120
There's like literally immaterial fields that are animating matter.

859
00:51:21,120 --> 00:51:25,040
I'm also kind of a monist that you accept the kind of insights that people have had over

860
00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:27,280
time that everything is one.

861
00:51:27,280 --> 00:51:31,600
But then thinking is kind of dualistic.

862
00:51:31,600 --> 00:51:35,520
The Dowd-Dijing which is such an influence on me famously begins that the Dowd that can

863
00:51:35,520 --> 00:51:37,760
be named is not the eternal Dow.

864
00:51:37,760 --> 00:51:41,840
So every time we start talking about this, we end up in a world of separation, which is

865
00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:45,880
necessary for thought, but seems to also miss it.

866
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:50,080
Well, it becomes generative because if we could capture it in language, everything would

867
00:51:50,080 --> 00:51:51,080
stop.

868
00:51:51,080 --> 00:51:52,080
Yes.

869
00:51:52,080 --> 00:51:53,880
It has to be radically open to itself.

870
00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:59,960
It has to constantly be going back over itself to create something new in order to be an evolutionary

871
00:51:59,960 --> 00:52:00,960
process.

872
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:06,720
If our minds could just reflect reality, then the whole process would just be done.

873
00:52:06,720 --> 00:52:09,720
We're part of the growth and the change and the evolution.

874
00:52:09,720 --> 00:52:11,120
So it has to be open ended.

875
00:52:11,120 --> 00:52:12,840
It has to be indeterminate.

876
00:52:12,840 --> 00:52:15,240
And I think that's fundamentally why it's paradoxical.

877
00:52:15,240 --> 00:52:16,240
Yes.

878
00:52:16,240 --> 00:52:21,200
And paradox being sort of the hardest thing for a mind to hold or reconcile.

879
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:23,440
I was going to say with the diet stuff.

880
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:27,720
I started experimenting with diet 10 or 12 years ago for my autoimmune.

881
00:52:27,720 --> 00:52:31,280
I was stunned at what it did for my consciousness.

882
00:52:31,280 --> 00:52:33,160
I was not doing it for that reason.

883
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:36,200
So what did the diet changes do for your consciousness?

884
00:52:36,200 --> 00:52:40,920
Well, because I've been mostly ketogenic, I mean, the last two and a half years, I've only

885
00:52:40,920 --> 00:52:42,360
eaten beef and cheese.

886
00:52:42,360 --> 00:52:45,600
I don't recommend that I'm doing this for extreme circumstance.

887
00:52:45,600 --> 00:52:48,440
Because of your autoimmune disease and it's been helping.

888
00:52:48,440 --> 00:52:49,440
Yes.

889
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:54,000
Ever since I've been doing kind of ketogenic thing, I still go through phases.

890
00:52:54,000 --> 00:53:00,560
So from October to March of this year, I was really lit up and I was pulling up to three

891
00:53:00,560 --> 00:53:02,360
all nighters a week.

892
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:03,360
Lit up.

893
00:53:03,360 --> 00:53:05,240
You had lots of energy and you were really inspired.

894
00:53:05,240 --> 00:53:06,240
Yes.

895
00:53:06,240 --> 00:53:07,240
And I made a music album.

896
00:53:07,240 --> 00:53:08,320
I was at the desert.

897
00:53:08,320 --> 00:53:10,000
There's such precious times.

898
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:15,240
But I've only had a few of these where like I really, really just feel animated.

899
00:53:15,240 --> 00:53:19,300
What I'm saying is that during that time, I wasn't sleeping two or three nights a

900
00:53:19,300 --> 00:53:20,300
week.

901
00:53:20,300 --> 00:53:24,100
Now I never miss two nights in a row because that's dangerous.

902
00:53:24,100 --> 00:53:30,860
So I'm still going through an experience that could be called some psychiatric terminology.

903
00:53:30,860 --> 00:53:31,860
Altered state.

904
00:53:31,860 --> 00:53:33,540
Who say it's psychotic or manic?

905
00:53:33,540 --> 00:53:34,540
Yeah.

906
00:53:34,540 --> 00:53:39,300
Being on a diet where my blood sugar isn't crashing on top of that has been hugely advantageous,

907
00:53:39,300 --> 00:53:40,300
right?

908
00:53:40,300 --> 00:53:42,460
Or navigating it for keeping it under control.

909
00:53:42,460 --> 00:53:43,460
That's right.

910
00:53:43,460 --> 00:53:47,300
What I do if I pull an on-hider is the next night when I start to get really ramped up,

911
00:53:47,300 --> 00:53:48,300
right?

912
00:53:48,300 --> 00:53:49,300
I'm going to sleep.

913
00:53:49,300 --> 00:53:50,300
Right.

914
00:53:50,300 --> 00:53:51,300
Exactly.

915
00:53:51,300 --> 00:53:52,300
It's so seductive.

916
00:53:52,300 --> 00:53:53,300
That's when the spirit comes.

917
00:53:53,300 --> 00:53:55,300
I eat a pound of cheese.

918
00:53:55,300 --> 00:53:57,300
I eat a pound of cheese and then I'm gone.

919
00:53:57,300 --> 00:53:58,300
Wow.

920
00:53:58,300 --> 00:53:59,300
Every time because it's so horrific.

921
00:53:59,300 --> 00:54:02,820
It's sort of the kind of phase changes that I experienced when I was younger.

922
00:54:02,820 --> 00:54:04,660
I still experience them.

923
00:54:04,660 --> 00:54:08,940
But the circumstances of both my biological reality, which is on this completely different

924
00:54:08,940 --> 00:54:11,460
way of eating helps, but also circumstantially.

925
00:54:11,460 --> 00:54:13,980
I mean, you were asked me at the beginning why to live on the road.

926
00:54:13,980 --> 00:54:19,380
Part of it was because I wanted to create a life where the things that kind of animate

927
00:54:19,380 --> 00:54:22,860
me could be better facilitated.

928
00:54:22,860 --> 00:54:25,260
I've been celibate for seven years.

929
00:54:25,260 --> 00:54:30,420
If I was caught up in a social world, those five months I just went through would have

930
00:54:30,420 --> 00:54:32,940
been all kinds of problematic, right?

931
00:54:32,940 --> 00:54:35,900
I would have been interfacing with a lot of different variables.

932
00:54:35,900 --> 00:54:38,980
That is the kind of thing that would make it so hard for me when I was young.

933
00:54:38,980 --> 00:54:40,380
Whereas this time I'm on the desert.

934
00:54:40,380 --> 00:54:41,780
I'm in my camper.

935
00:54:41,780 --> 00:54:46,420
I'm working, but I've got that under wraps and I can just be alone a lot with that.

936
00:54:46,420 --> 00:54:48,820
And that's really created a different kind of outcome.

937
00:54:48,820 --> 00:54:52,700
You could say it's like a monastic lifestyle, but that really wouldn't understand.

938
00:54:52,700 --> 00:54:54,980
It's more like you're trying to reduce the noise.

939
00:54:54,980 --> 00:54:55,980
That's right.

940
00:54:55,980 --> 00:54:58,540
So that you can identify what the different influences are.

941
00:54:58,540 --> 00:55:01,020
I mean, the sense I have is almost like an alchemist.

942
00:55:01,020 --> 00:55:05,220
You created this vessel and you want to be able to control the variables in your experiments.

943
00:55:05,220 --> 00:55:09,180
So you can understand what's the relationship between the cheese and the sleep and the

944
00:55:09,180 --> 00:55:11,900
inspiration and the making the album.

945
00:55:11,900 --> 00:55:12,900
Yes.

946
00:55:12,900 --> 00:55:13,900
I felt compelled to do it.

947
00:55:13,900 --> 00:55:18,900
I did not do any of it as a sort of, oh, I want to be monastic or anything like that.

948
00:55:18,900 --> 00:55:19,900
Right.

949
00:55:19,900 --> 00:55:21,900
It's not about virtue or attitude or piety.

950
00:55:21,900 --> 00:55:23,820
So yeah, there were just kind of solutions.

951
00:55:23,820 --> 00:55:26,700
I love how you just said reducing the noise.

952
00:55:26,700 --> 00:55:28,420
And then they become a kind of spiritual thing.

953
00:55:28,420 --> 00:55:34,820
I mean, being celibate, it has a spiritual quality, but I became celibate because I found

954
00:55:34,820 --> 00:55:38,740
intimate relationships very hard on my mind constantly.

955
00:55:38,740 --> 00:55:40,540
Yeah, I hear that one.

956
00:55:40,540 --> 00:55:43,460
And then the attitude is like, well, just do the work.

957
00:55:43,460 --> 00:55:47,620
And I'm like, at some point, like I could keep doing the work, but at some point, it's like,

958
00:55:47,620 --> 00:55:50,380
I don't actually want to work that hard on that.

959
00:55:50,380 --> 00:55:53,820
How about I stop doing all of that and try and do something else?

960
00:55:53,820 --> 00:55:57,220
Now, this is problematic because it can reinforce individuals.

961
00:55:57,220 --> 00:56:01,940
Like I do believe, you know, sex and family and all of this is very important culturally.

962
00:56:01,940 --> 00:56:05,900
You don't want everyone going in the route of individual.

963
00:56:05,900 --> 00:56:08,900
Right.

964
00:56:08,900 --> 00:56:12,900
Well, you don't want everyone in the tribe to be going through a psychotic initiation process

965
00:56:12,900 --> 00:56:14,900
at the same time either.

966
00:56:14,900 --> 00:56:15,900
Yeah.

967
00:56:15,900 --> 00:56:19,900
So, but I think the small percentage of people are going to need to set the conditions of

968
00:56:19,900 --> 00:56:23,180
their life in so far as they're able, you know, like with resources or privilege to be able

969
00:56:23,180 --> 00:56:24,900
to kind of live and alternate path.

970
00:56:24,900 --> 00:56:27,500
But you don't want these things to become dominant either culturally.

971
00:56:27,500 --> 00:56:29,540
I mean, that's a whole other discussion.

972
00:56:29,540 --> 00:56:30,540
Exactly.

973
00:56:30,540 --> 00:56:34,260
So I don't take any of my experiences, anything that I would even think that other people

974
00:56:34,260 --> 00:56:35,780
would need to do.

975
00:56:35,780 --> 00:56:38,900
Most people are called to have family, love, you know, all that kind of stuff.

976
00:56:38,900 --> 00:56:40,740
And that's probably as it should be.

977
00:56:40,740 --> 00:56:44,420
Well, that's what I think is fundamentally significant about what you're describing is

978
00:56:44,420 --> 00:56:48,700
that it's a discovery process that comes from you being in touch with yourself.

979
00:56:48,700 --> 00:56:54,820
It's not a prescriptive program that you subscribe to some YouTube channel and they said, "Okay,

980
00:56:54,820 --> 00:56:57,580
go get a trailer and start eating beef and cheese.

981
00:56:57,580 --> 00:57:00,980
You yourself are learning from yourself and your own process."

982
00:57:00,980 --> 00:57:06,020
Which in a sense, that's fundamentally, I think, what the ecological, scientific inquiry is

983
00:57:06,020 --> 00:57:07,020
about.

984
00:57:07,020 --> 00:57:11,100
It's about observation and involvement and being close to the subject that you're studying.

985
00:57:11,100 --> 00:57:12,740
I kind of have a sense of you.

986
00:57:12,740 --> 00:57:17,540
Sort of like a thorough character, but also sort of like an alchemist or an ecologist.

987
00:57:17,540 --> 00:57:23,100
You're like Jane Goodall in the forest with the gorillas, but you're the gorilla as well

988
00:57:23,100 --> 00:57:25,660
as the scientist studying the gorillas.

989
00:57:25,660 --> 00:57:26,660
Yeah.

990
00:57:26,660 --> 00:57:31,460
I'll just say, I mean, at a base level, I mean, it is also really compelled by enormous physical

991
00:57:31,460 --> 00:57:32,460
pain.

992
00:57:32,460 --> 00:57:37,220
You know, I never really got into kind of, "Oh, the pain is there for a reason."

993
00:57:37,220 --> 00:57:40,100
Like, that didn't feel validating.

994
00:57:40,100 --> 00:57:44,300
Although I can accept that there's probably a layer at which all of this makes sense, but

995
00:57:44,300 --> 00:57:49,020
that just doesn't work for me, or at least when I've been at my worst.

996
00:57:49,020 --> 00:57:53,180
And that kind of compelled me to really have to try something different.

997
00:57:53,180 --> 00:57:58,700
Yeah, it's that mixture of you feeling pressured to do it, but also doing it for your own reasons.

998
00:57:58,700 --> 00:58:03,420
But even with the interest in Christianity and your ancestral roots, there isn't like

999
00:58:03,420 --> 00:58:07,300
a meaning making that happens around the pain that you suffer.

1000
00:58:07,300 --> 00:58:09,140
Is there just flat out zero sum?

1001
00:58:09,140 --> 00:58:10,780
This is like a bad thing.

1002
00:58:10,780 --> 00:58:11,940
Well, that's really interesting.

1003
00:58:11,940 --> 00:58:15,020
I sort of think of my pain so utilitarian.

1004
00:58:15,020 --> 00:58:16,740
Eat this food and you feel better.

1005
00:58:16,740 --> 00:58:20,900
Do this amount of walking because I'm not really that kind of a thinker otherwise.

1006
00:58:20,900 --> 00:58:24,740
I almost treat my body like a machine with the autoimmune disease.

1007
00:58:24,740 --> 00:58:29,540
But yeah, I mean, look, the path back to Christianity, I've been off of it for 20 years.

1008
00:58:29,540 --> 00:58:32,100
And I've been trying to walk it the last two years.

1009
00:58:32,100 --> 00:58:35,820
I'm still in a very novice place of exploration.

1010
00:58:35,820 --> 00:58:40,560
And certainly the central image of a cross and suffering and a kind of resurrection that

1011
00:58:40,560 --> 00:58:44,420
happens through the suffering feels meaningful.

1012
00:58:44,420 --> 00:58:50,700
But I'm trying to set my life up in a way where God can animate me more.

1013
00:58:50,700 --> 00:58:53,660
I'm still in a very incoherent world with all of that.

1014
00:58:53,660 --> 00:58:59,060
It's made a lot more difficult by the fact that the Gospels, like I really love the Gospels.

1015
00:58:59,060 --> 00:59:01,660
And then we have all of the Christian interpretations.

1016
00:59:01,660 --> 00:59:04,060
A lot of them I find miss the mark.

1017
00:59:04,060 --> 00:59:07,460
It is sort of the path of a desert monk or desert mystic.

1018
00:59:07,460 --> 00:59:13,140
It's interesting because a lot of my philosophy and spirituality and study of different religions

1019
00:59:13,140 --> 00:59:17,180
and theologies very Haiti intellectual, but there's something about the connection with

1020
00:59:17,180 --> 00:59:19,500
Christianity that feels deeper.

1021
00:59:19,500 --> 00:59:23,580
It just feels like a little bit more intuitive, a little bit more visceral.

1022
00:59:23,580 --> 00:59:29,100
And it resonates or connects with my memories, with my father and my mom and different things

1023
00:59:29,100 --> 00:59:30,100
growing up.

1024
00:59:30,100 --> 00:59:31,580
And that is kind of incoherent.

1025
00:59:31,580 --> 00:59:36,620
It is kind of like you can't put it into a language schema, but it has that power.

1026
00:59:36,620 --> 00:59:42,540
And I think that's what Jung was on about when he was strongly cautioning against Westerners

1027
00:59:42,540 --> 00:59:46,220
just attaching to, oh, now I'm a Dallas, now I'm a Yogi.

1028
00:59:46,220 --> 00:59:51,900
Now I'm interested in Tibetan Buddhism and actually because it is something that can detour

1029
00:59:51,900 --> 00:59:54,980
us from that deeper affinity.

1030
00:59:54,980 --> 00:59:59,060
One of the things that I kind of discovered is that ever since I was a teenager, I got

1031
00:59:59,060 --> 01:00:06,660
exposed to, there was a Catholic activist, Petra Kelly, who was a very strong nonviolence

1032
01:00:06,660 --> 01:00:12,060
radical in Germany, who was at one of the foundations of the German Green Party back when

1033
01:00:12,060 --> 01:00:13,260
it was West Germany.

1034
01:00:13,260 --> 01:00:16,740
And the Green Party has evolved and become something different, but it was a very passive

1035
01:00:16,740 --> 01:00:23,740
this very anti-war, very ecological and very militantly nonviolent direct action movement.

1036
01:00:23,740 --> 01:00:26,420
I got exposed to that when I was a teenager.

1037
01:00:26,420 --> 01:00:28,100
I was at a conference and she was at it.

1038
01:00:28,100 --> 01:00:30,140
It made so much sense to me.

1039
01:00:30,140 --> 01:00:35,420
And then looking back on that, that whole Christian ethos has really been operating in the

1040
01:00:35,420 --> 01:00:41,460
background for a lot of my life, the whole emphasis on service, the importance of love

1041
01:00:41,460 --> 01:00:42,460
and compassion.

1042
01:00:42,460 --> 01:00:43,460
Yes.

1043
01:00:43,460 --> 01:00:45,860
And meeting people and listening.

1044
01:00:45,860 --> 01:00:51,100
And those aren't things that come out of a Buddhist, you know, Taoist framework spontaneously.

1045
01:00:51,100 --> 01:00:57,380
Those are cultural imprints, I think, that a template, let's say, that I was kind of following

1046
01:00:57,380 --> 01:00:58,380
naturally.

1047
01:00:58,380 --> 01:01:02,620
And so my own interest in Christianity, especially also through young and through a lot of different

1048
01:01:02,620 --> 01:01:07,460
other sources, has been rediscovering like, oh, I was kind of operating on these assumptions

1049
01:01:07,460 --> 01:01:08,460
all along.

1050
01:01:08,460 --> 01:01:10,260
Yes, exactly.

1051
01:01:10,260 --> 01:01:12,260
It's always been in the background.

1052
01:01:12,260 --> 01:01:13,700
And you take it for granted.

1053
01:01:13,700 --> 01:01:16,380
You don't realize it comes from somewhere until you learn.

1054
01:01:16,380 --> 01:01:17,380
Exactly.

1055
01:01:17,380 --> 01:01:21,740
Even my interest in Marxism, Marxism is millennial kind of Christian apocalyptic, like we're all

1056
01:01:21,740 --> 01:01:23,500
going to find the Garden of Eden again.

1057
01:01:23,500 --> 01:01:24,500
Oh, wait a second.

1058
01:01:24,500 --> 01:01:27,260
That's just a wee has of Christian tropes, you know.

1059
01:01:27,260 --> 01:01:28,700
So it was always there.

1060
01:01:28,700 --> 01:01:32,500
And so as I get older, I'm kind of like discovering myself as a Christian that I already

1061
01:01:32,500 --> 01:01:33,500
was.

1062
01:01:33,500 --> 01:01:35,180
I really resonate with that.

1063
01:01:35,180 --> 01:01:36,180
Yeah.

1064
01:01:36,180 --> 01:01:39,660
Even saying I'm a Christian is not something that I can even, I feel myself cringed when I

1065
01:01:39,660 --> 01:01:40,660
say that.

1066
01:01:40,660 --> 01:01:42,860
I feel like I'm probably going to get there.

1067
01:01:42,860 --> 01:01:47,060
Yes, it's like all the symbology that I have, all of that stuff is tied into it.

1068
01:01:47,060 --> 01:01:52,100
But just like you said, the values, the ethics I've thought about the world, I've just kind

1069
01:01:52,100 --> 01:01:53,700
of taken them as a given.

1070
01:01:53,700 --> 01:01:56,820
Of course, it makes sense to turn the other cheek or to forgive.

1071
01:01:56,820 --> 01:02:03,100
But when you learn about the context in which that arose, I mean, it was insanely radical.

1072
01:02:03,100 --> 01:02:07,100
And of course, that is not the way that plenty of people have operated.

1073
01:02:07,100 --> 01:02:08,580
It's absolutely.

1074
01:02:08,580 --> 01:02:10,820
It's not the favor of Christian.

1075
01:02:10,820 --> 01:02:14,460
There's all kinds of beautiful religious understandings and stuff all across the world.

1076
01:02:14,460 --> 01:02:18,900
Some of them get at, I think, a path the God is probably stronger than others.

1077
01:02:18,900 --> 01:02:20,700
You know, it's not all relativistic.

1078
01:02:20,700 --> 01:02:26,060
It's just that the Christian thing is a particular kind of lineage that I'm in, but also in the

1079
01:02:26,060 --> 01:02:31,980
West, you know, the way that we ended up with the kind of cultural products or ways of understanding.

1080
01:02:31,980 --> 01:02:36,500
One of the things that I think about, like, so take the idea of forgiveness.

1081
01:02:36,500 --> 01:02:37,740
This may be controversial to say.

1082
01:02:37,740 --> 01:02:41,300
I mean, one of the, you know, I had run away from Christianity and just screw all that, make

1083
01:02:41,300 --> 01:02:43,500
fun of it, you know, like I was on that side.

1084
01:02:43,500 --> 01:02:45,180
I never became a new atheist.

1085
01:02:45,180 --> 01:02:46,180
Yeah, yeah.

1086
01:02:46,180 --> 01:02:47,180
Me too.

1087
01:02:47,180 --> 01:02:48,180
It was a joke.

1088
01:02:48,180 --> 01:02:50,500
You know, Jerry Fallwell and the extreme religious.

1089
01:02:50,500 --> 01:02:57,140
I was like, this is ridiculous, but I remember after that, Dylan Roof killed nine black

1090
01:02:57,140 --> 01:03:00,020
perishers and stuff, Charleston.

1091
01:03:00,020 --> 01:03:01,020
Oh, yeah.

1092
01:03:01,020 --> 01:03:03,220
It was a stunning thing.

1093
01:03:03,220 --> 01:03:10,300
Two days later, one of the mothers got up on a public and said she forgave him.

1094
01:03:10,300 --> 01:03:15,260
So what in the world produces an ethic where somebody comes at?

1095
01:03:15,260 --> 01:03:19,540
Now the problem with saying that is I would never tell an individual you need to forgive

1096
01:03:19,540 --> 01:03:22,180
a killer or a perpetrator, right?

1097
01:03:22,180 --> 01:03:24,700
Because there's different circumstances, different paths.

1098
01:03:24,700 --> 01:03:26,780
But I found this incredibly inviable.

1099
01:03:26,780 --> 01:03:31,060
Like it spoke to some part of me that was a lot deeper than just rationalization.

1100
01:03:31,060 --> 01:03:37,140
And I guess from that I also then think if the forgiveness ethic that was really infused

1101
01:03:37,140 --> 01:03:39,780
from Judeo-Christian roots, not the only place it comes from.

1102
01:03:39,780 --> 01:03:44,860
If that goes away, which it is, then it really does become a situational ethics where everyone's

1103
01:03:44,860 --> 01:03:46,780
like, well, I don't have to forgive this person.

1104
01:03:46,780 --> 01:03:47,780
Should I?

1105
01:03:47,780 --> 01:03:52,540
And then it becomes something as an ideal collapses.

1106
01:03:52,540 --> 01:03:56,820
And I get worried about the kind of atomization and sort of being at each other's throats and

1107
01:03:56,820 --> 01:04:00,980
how people talk about toxic relationships, toxic this, toxic that.

1108
01:04:00,980 --> 01:04:04,300
And becomes a kind of war or a battleground.

1109
01:04:04,300 --> 01:04:08,660
So we don't have to have any of the Judeo-Christian ethic.

1110
01:04:08,660 --> 01:04:14,260
But we do, I believe, as a people trying to live together, we're going to need some replacement.

1111
01:04:14,260 --> 01:04:19,500
If it's going to be replaced, some sort of agreed upon ideals in which we can operate,

1112
01:04:19,500 --> 01:04:24,300
or we're just going to end up in a kind of collapse of anything like a social fabric of

1113
01:04:24,300 --> 01:04:26,220
neighborliness or anything like that.

1114
01:04:26,220 --> 01:04:27,220
It's a kind of hellscape.

1115
01:04:27,220 --> 01:04:28,500
I sort of see us going there.

1116
01:04:28,500 --> 01:04:29,980
I don't know if you'd detect that too.

1117
01:04:29,980 --> 01:04:30,980
Oh, yes, absolutely.

1118
01:04:30,980 --> 01:04:32,140
We take it for granted.

1119
01:04:32,140 --> 01:04:36,780
So many of the assumptions of just kindness and generosity and the golden rule.

1120
01:04:36,780 --> 01:04:39,540
We take it for granted because we could live in a caste society.

1121
01:04:39,540 --> 01:04:40,540
That's right.

1122
01:04:40,540 --> 01:04:44,700
You're at a lower caste so we can treat you like an animal or we can normalize slavery or

1123
01:04:44,700 --> 01:04:46,700
we can normalize human sacrifice.

1124
01:04:46,700 --> 01:04:50,980
I mean, I would like to see the ethic extend to animals, which I think the Christianity

1125
01:04:50,980 --> 01:04:52,260
has kind of failed.

1126
01:04:52,260 --> 01:04:58,140
Although it was Jesus's teaching was a reaction against the sacrifices, the lamb sacrifices

1127
01:04:58,140 --> 01:05:02,020
and the goat sacrifices that came before in Judaism.

1128
01:05:02,020 --> 01:05:05,620
There was kind of a reform that he was arguing against.

1129
01:05:05,620 --> 01:05:06,620
That's right.

1130
01:05:06,620 --> 01:05:07,620
That ethic can go further.

1131
01:05:07,620 --> 01:05:11,540
But I think what you're saying is that we take it for granted until we start losing it.

1132
01:05:11,540 --> 01:05:12,900
And then we're like, wait a second.

1133
01:05:12,900 --> 01:05:13,900
Love your neighbor as yourself.

1134
01:05:13,900 --> 01:05:15,780
Wouldn't it be nice to have that back?

1135
01:05:15,780 --> 01:05:17,740
Because we were kind of assuming that for a long time.

1136
01:05:17,740 --> 01:05:18,740
But I'm curious.

1137
01:05:18,740 --> 01:05:19,980
I mean, this is maybe going a far field.

1138
01:05:19,980 --> 01:05:26,420
But in the Christian myth or the Christian story, there's the idea that Jesus is a great

1139
01:05:26,420 --> 01:05:31,700
teacher in that Jesus teaches this incredible message that isn't just be nice to each

1140
01:05:31,700 --> 01:05:32,700
other.

1141
01:05:32,700 --> 01:05:33,700
He also goes in.

1142
01:05:33,700 --> 01:05:39,020
He gets furious at the money changers and he goes in and he's like actively seeking justice.

1143
01:05:39,020 --> 01:05:43,540
But there's this piece to the story, which is also the resurrection, where you believe

1144
01:05:43,540 --> 01:05:48,420
that the tomb is empty and the guy came back and, hey, I defeated death.

1145
01:05:48,420 --> 01:05:50,380
And I've always kind of wondered about that.

1146
01:05:50,380 --> 01:05:54,780
And I was thinking about it and I've been considering it, especially since Easter,

1147
01:05:54,780 --> 01:06:00,020
really what it says is that yes, there's a teaching that love is the way.

1148
01:06:00,020 --> 01:06:05,820
And there's something more, which is that the universe is magically on the side of that

1149
01:06:05,820 --> 01:06:07,700
teaching, winning.

1150
01:06:07,700 --> 01:06:12,900
And that's what the, that's what the resurrection symbolizes that it's not just a good idea.

1151
01:06:12,900 --> 01:06:17,900
It's a good idea that's going to win because the whole universe is on its side and it will

1152
01:06:17,900 --> 01:06:20,020
make it win magically.

1153
01:06:20,020 --> 01:06:23,060
And then you can say, well, maybe it's more than magic.

1154
01:06:23,060 --> 01:06:24,060
Maybe it's an ecological.

1155
01:06:24,060 --> 01:06:30,060
Maybe love is somehow built into, and then if we get into the ecology nature, including

1156
01:06:30,060 --> 01:06:34,540
the transcendent dimension, if we think about synchronicities, we think about miracles, and

1157
01:06:34,540 --> 01:06:39,060
we think about spontaneous healings as being somehow ecologically that they're built into

1158
01:06:39,060 --> 01:06:40,060
nature.

1159
01:06:40,060 --> 01:06:41,580
I'm just curious what your thought is.

1160
01:06:41,580 --> 01:06:42,580
Yeah.

1161
01:06:42,580 --> 01:06:44,340
Well, I love that framing.

1162
01:06:44,340 --> 01:06:49,020
I mean, look, the resurrection, St. Paul says, you know, without the resurrection, this

1163
01:06:49,020 --> 01:06:50,020
is all in vain.

1164
01:06:50,020 --> 01:06:56,340
And a lot of Christians have drawn a line there that you have to take the bodily reanimation

1165
01:06:56,340 --> 01:07:02,540
of Jesus as the central pivot point that separates it from just a teaching about love, but

1166
01:07:02,540 --> 01:07:07,460
it's actually showing some sort of intervention by God.

1167
01:07:07,460 --> 01:07:08,940
It's become a litmus test.

1168
01:07:08,940 --> 01:07:11,820
If you really believe in the resurrection, then you're really a Christian.

1169
01:07:11,820 --> 01:07:16,020
I love how you are framing that, though, because if the bodily resurrection did happen,

1170
01:07:16,020 --> 01:07:20,020
it is something that's really important.

1171
01:07:20,020 --> 01:07:24,460
If this physically happened on Earth, my view is these things can happen, and that they've

1172
01:07:24,460 --> 01:07:28,140
happened cross culturally, and that the way that we use consciousness now in dominant

1173
01:07:28,140 --> 01:07:33,580
society is so limited in myopic, and that there are all kinds of things, or shape shifting

1174
01:07:33,580 --> 01:07:34,580
that's going on.

1175
01:07:34,580 --> 01:07:37,620
There's ways of calling in the weather pattern, you know, all of this.

1176
01:07:37,620 --> 01:07:41,140
There's actually an extraordinary book called The World We Used to Live in by the Native

1177
01:07:41,140 --> 01:07:47,300
Historian Vindaloria, Jr. It's settler accounts when they were colonizing in Settling United

1178
01:07:47,300 --> 01:07:52,940
States of what they saw when they were interfacing with Native groups who had yet to be colonized.

1179
01:07:52,940 --> 01:07:55,460
It's called The World We Used to Live in by Vindaloria.

1180
01:07:55,460 --> 01:07:57,900
Yeah, Vindaloria Jr.'s wonderful historian.

1181
01:07:57,900 --> 01:08:01,900
And it's just a count after account after account of things that reductionists would say

1182
01:08:01,900 --> 01:08:02,900
is impossible.

1183
01:08:02,900 --> 01:08:08,180
You read 200 of these, and you start thinking, wait a second, this not only is possible,

1184
01:08:08,180 --> 01:08:12,940
it looks common. In the Christian, the Western tradition, there's all kinds of miracles, and

1185
01:08:12,940 --> 01:08:14,740
healings, and communications, and stuff.

1186
01:08:14,740 --> 01:08:17,980
So I think of resurrection and all of that's really important.

1187
01:08:17,980 --> 01:08:22,420
I mean, in terms of my current beliefs about it, I'm reluctant to treat it metaphorically.

1188
01:08:22,420 --> 01:08:24,220
I think metaphor has a place.

1189
01:08:24,220 --> 01:08:28,420
I also am quite convinced that the early Christians did not mean it metaphorically.

1190
01:08:28,420 --> 01:08:29,420
They're right.

1191
01:08:29,420 --> 01:08:31,020
No, they've meant it literally.

1192
01:08:31,020 --> 01:08:32,340
This happened.

1193
01:08:32,340 --> 01:08:35,620
So I'm exploring, I've been reading just the evidence.

1194
01:08:35,620 --> 01:08:41,740
I'm exploring how all of that plays out in my life, even if it literally happened to me,

1195
01:08:41,740 --> 01:08:47,820
it still doesn't denote an exclusivity to Christ and Christianity that's never happened elsewhere.

1196
01:08:47,820 --> 01:08:48,940
That would be my other question.

1197
01:08:48,940 --> 01:08:50,180
I'm a pluralist like this.

1198
01:08:50,180 --> 01:08:51,180
I'm a universalist.

1199
01:08:51,180 --> 01:08:55,540
How are you going to say all the people who never live during Christ's time are damned?

1200
01:08:55,540 --> 01:08:56,540
Yeah.

1201
01:08:56,540 --> 01:09:00,900
So there's a big obstacle for a lot of people, I think, deservedly when you say Christ is

1202
01:09:00,900 --> 01:09:01,900
the only way.

1203
01:09:01,900 --> 01:09:07,660
Here, Christ saying, I am the way, I think it's like I'm the stand in for love and love is

1204
01:09:07,660 --> 01:09:08,660
the way.

1205
01:09:08,660 --> 01:09:09,660
That's how I hear that.

1206
01:09:09,660 --> 01:09:14,180
Not you have to have heard the word Christ and know the story and then agree with it because

1207
01:09:14,180 --> 01:09:18,620
that is going to exclude way too many people for all kinds of different reasons.

1208
01:09:18,620 --> 01:09:23,020
It's just absurd and it's absurd on its face that that's what the meaning would be.

1209
01:09:23,020 --> 01:09:24,020
I don't know.

1210
01:09:24,020 --> 01:09:29,780
I mean, when I picked up the Gospels three years ago, I had been 20 years away.

1211
01:09:29,780 --> 01:09:31,460
I'd never actually read them.

1212
01:09:31,460 --> 01:09:33,280
I have a similar experience.

1213
01:09:33,280 --> 01:09:35,940
My frame on the world was completely shattered.

1214
01:09:35,940 --> 01:09:38,660
I had no idea this stuff was going to come back in my life.

1215
01:09:38,660 --> 01:09:39,660
I got the New Testament.

1216
01:09:39,660 --> 01:09:42,180
And of course, I did the thing of like God, give me a sign.

1217
01:09:42,180 --> 01:09:43,820
I randomly open.

1218
01:09:43,820 --> 01:09:48,820
And the first thing the passage I came to this is just remarkable was Jesus says to the

1219
01:09:48,820 --> 01:09:52,060
Pharisees, why does this generation ask for a sign?

1220
01:09:52,060 --> 01:09:53,500
I tell you, you won't get a sign.

1221
01:09:53,500 --> 01:09:55,940
I was like, okay, well, there's my sign.

1222
01:09:55,940 --> 01:09:59,500
And because I've been thinking I'm going to have some mystical experience again.

1223
01:09:59,500 --> 01:10:00,500
No, no, no, no.

1224
01:10:00,500 --> 01:10:01,500
That was the sign.

1225
01:10:01,500 --> 01:10:02,500
That was it.

1226
01:10:02,500 --> 01:10:04,500
That does the trick right there.

1227
01:10:04,500 --> 01:10:07,620
And then I read the Gospels completely fresher at them several times.

1228
01:10:07,620 --> 01:10:12,580
And I was like, wait a second, this is way different than I had thought.

1229
01:10:12,580 --> 01:10:17,900
And because I wasn't in some theological stew about what I had to think Jesus was saying.

1230
01:10:17,900 --> 01:10:18,900
Right.

1231
01:10:18,900 --> 01:10:19,900
So I don't know.

1232
01:10:19,900 --> 01:10:23,340
One thing I'll say will is that I'm weary of going alone.

1233
01:10:23,340 --> 01:10:24,980
I do want actually a tradition.

1234
01:10:24,980 --> 01:10:29,740
Well, that's something there's been a lot of from me, maybe dunking on Eastern religion

1235
01:10:29,740 --> 01:10:30,740
in this conversation.

1236
01:10:30,740 --> 01:10:35,540
But that's one of the things I do come back to quite a lot with Buddhism, the idea that

1237
01:10:35,540 --> 01:10:39,740
the three jewels, the jewels are the Buddha, the life of the Buddha, the teaching of the

1238
01:10:39,740 --> 01:10:40,740
Buddha.

1239
01:10:40,740 --> 01:10:42,220
But then there's the community.

1240
01:10:42,220 --> 01:10:47,420
And so there is a feeling that it's through interpersonal connection and friendship and disclosure

1241
01:10:47,420 --> 01:10:53,020
and intimacy and vulnerability with each other that we weave something together.

1242
01:10:53,020 --> 01:10:57,900
That sustains us beyond just how do I sit here and figure it out for myself.

1243
01:10:57,900 --> 01:11:02,380
And that's been really super crucial for me that I have to have those relationships in

1244
01:11:02,380 --> 01:11:04,860
place in my life to lift me.

1245
01:11:04,860 --> 01:11:07,860
It's not just, you know, how am I taking care of myself today.

1246
01:11:07,860 --> 01:11:11,700
It's like, how is the fabric that I'm woven into sustaining me?

1247
01:11:11,700 --> 01:11:15,620
Even in the gospels, where two or three of you gather, there I am.

1248
01:11:15,620 --> 01:11:19,660
It's difficult for me to swallow that because I spend so much of my time alone.

1249
01:11:19,660 --> 01:11:22,820
Maybe you're physically alone, but not relationally alone.

1250
01:11:22,820 --> 01:11:26,620
Maybe your relationships are very alive inside of your heart and you're still connected

1251
01:11:26,620 --> 01:11:29,020
with people even though they're at a distance.

1252
01:11:29,020 --> 01:11:30,020
I like that.

1253
01:11:30,020 --> 01:11:32,220
I mean, look, I love the work I do with training people.

1254
01:11:32,220 --> 01:11:35,980
So I am interfacing with people all the time and I get a lot of joy out of that.

1255
01:11:35,980 --> 01:11:40,660
I can be quite extroverted as you're probably hearing those conversations, but I also find human

1256
01:11:40,660 --> 01:11:47,140
relationships in general just exhausting to a point of, I can't egg it, but I'm open to

1257
01:11:47,140 --> 01:11:48,660
being guided back to community.

1258
01:11:48,660 --> 01:11:53,420
And you know, when I lived in Vermont, I did a lot of that kind of being part of a community.

1259
01:11:53,420 --> 01:11:55,980
It is a word that gets so misused.

1260
01:11:55,980 --> 01:12:00,700
It's community is now just a gathering or even just a gathering of people online, but there's

1261
01:12:00,700 --> 01:12:05,960
something about really feeling authentic vulnerability and trust with each other and

1262
01:12:05,960 --> 01:12:13,300
feeling like you're not conditionally or transactionally interacting based on calculating

1263
01:12:13,300 --> 01:12:18,220
how much you disclose and how much you can get from the other person.

1264
01:12:18,220 --> 01:12:20,660
So much of everything just becomes economies.

1265
01:12:20,660 --> 01:12:25,460
There's something about that authentic freedom to just connect and be vulnerable and to share

1266
01:12:25,460 --> 01:12:26,460
who we are.

1267
01:12:26,460 --> 01:12:29,260
That's when I think a real community starts to emerge.

1268
01:12:29,260 --> 01:12:32,460
Yeah, and I know you do therapy, don't you?

1269
01:12:32,460 --> 01:12:33,460
Yes.

1270
01:12:33,460 --> 01:12:37,220
Do you find that you can recreate what you just said in therapy or do you find that that's

1271
01:12:37,220 --> 01:12:39,060
always a kind of fear here?

1272
01:12:39,060 --> 01:12:40,660
That's a big question.

1273
01:12:40,660 --> 01:12:42,020
I would say yes.

1274
01:12:42,020 --> 01:12:43,380
I would say yes.

1275
01:12:43,380 --> 01:12:48,580
I think it's within a certain role structure and a certain set of expectations.

1276
01:12:48,580 --> 01:12:54,700
But I think that the money and the time and the schedule and the role are just a means

1277
01:12:54,700 --> 01:12:55,980
to an end.

1278
01:12:55,980 --> 01:12:59,780
But the end is fundamentally the same kind of communion and caring.

1279
01:12:59,780 --> 01:13:05,620
If I don't authentically feel caring towards the people that I work with, it's a big conversation

1280
01:13:05,620 --> 01:13:11,900
because I also feel very mysteriously connected like people show me parts about myself.

1281
01:13:11,900 --> 01:13:18,060
I'm often working on issues in myself that I find with the clients that I work with.

1282
01:13:18,060 --> 01:13:22,860
It's a very mysterious, I'm guided to certain clients, I have strong intuitions, things

1283
01:13:22,860 --> 01:13:23,940
will pop into my head.

1284
01:13:23,940 --> 01:13:29,020
I have a certain intimacy of maybe if that's not the right word, but yeah, it is the right

1285
01:13:29,020 --> 01:13:30,020
word.

1286
01:13:30,020 --> 01:13:35,300
But yeah, it's a big conversation because I know peer support puts a strong emphasis on

1287
01:13:35,300 --> 01:13:39,220
the voluntary connection between equals and therapy.

1288
01:13:39,220 --> 01:13:43,940
The frame clearly is there's one person's in the helper role and one person's in the

1289
01:13:43,940 --> 01:13:45,540
being helped role.

1290
01:13:45,540 --> 01:13:46,540
Yeah.

1291
01:13:46,540 --> 01:13:49,540
I have people close to me who are just anti therapy.

1292
01:13:49,540 --> 01:13:50,540
They just don't.

1293
01:13:50,540 --> 01:13:51,540
Yeah.

1294
01:13:51,540 --> 01:13:52,540
They see that.

1295
01:13:52,540 --> 01:13:56,140
But then I also think about what is the economics of peer support?

1296
01:13:56,140 --> 01:13:57,140
Yeah.

1297
01:13:57,140 --> 01:13:58,140
Yeah.

1298
01:13:58,140 --> 01:14:01,540
Because then you got grants, you know, like somebody's getting paid somewhere.

1299
01:14:01,540 --> 01:14:06,140
Ultimately, I think that we have to replace therapy with healthy communities.

1300
01:14:06,140 --> 01:14:07,140
Yeah.

1301
01:14:07,140 --> 01:14:08,140
Yes.

1302
01:14:08,140 --> 01:14:12,140
There are going to be people who are going to be maybe better listeners, whatever that

1303
01:14:12,140 --> 01:14:14,740
means or maybe better isn't the right word.

1304
01:14:14,740 --> 01:14:18,860
But some people are going to gravitate towards the healer role or going to gravitate towards

1305
01:14:18,860 --> 01:14:21,780
the mediator role or the mentor role.

1306
01:14:21,780 --> 01:14:25,420
And I think that's just natural in the diversity.

1307
01:14:25,420 --> 01:14:29,180
But I think that it ultimately has to be about healthy communities.

1308
01:14:29,180 --> 01:14:34,060
And if we're not building healthy communities, which includes the political, economic, systemic

1309
01:14:34,060 --> 01:14:40,020
framework to make it possible, then I think it's just another commodity and a capitalist

1310
01:14:40,020 --> 01:14:41,020
system.

1311
01:14:41,020 --> 01:14:42,620
And I don't think that's the solution.

1312
01:14:42,620 --> 01:14:47,740
Maybe it's an important vehicle, like you're saying towards the kind of connection.

1313
01:14:47,740 --> 01:14:51,460
But the reason why that's needed is because of the unthreading going on.

1314
01:14:51,460 --> 01:14:55,620
I would say my work as a therapist is kind of like a compromise solution.

1315
01:14:55,620 --> 01:14:56,620
Yeah.

1316
01:14:56,620 --> 01:15:01,820
If I was really to follow my vocation, I would be someone who just had free time and who

1317
01:15:01,820 --> 01:15:08,020
could be connecting with people and offering something maybe even as a specialty.

1318
01:15:08,020 --> 01:15:11,300
Maybe I could someone can be really helpful with this kind of thing.

1319
01:15:11,300 --> 01:15:14,060
But without the transactional economics.

1320
01:15:14,060 --> 01:15:15,060
But here we are.

1321
01:15:15,060 --> 01:15:16,060
Yeah.

1322
01:15:16,060 --> 01:15:19,060
Like you said, peer supports, I mean, most peer supports all paid too.

1323
01:15:19,060 --> 01:15:20,380
And it's all systemic.

1324
01:15:20,380 --> 01:15:25,060
And that forces, like you were using a compromise, it forces a lot of compromises actually.

1325
01:15:25,060 --> 01:15:28,500
And part of what I'm always trying to do in intentional peer support when I'm training

1326
01:15:28,500 --> 01:15:33,860
people is to call attention to, yes, you're in that kind of setting.

1327
01:15:33,860 --> 01:15:37,340
The sort of values of mutual aid that are, you know, they came from a different place.

1328
01:15:37,340 --> 01:15:38,540
And so just remembering.

1329
01:15:38,540 --> 01:15:39,540
Yes.

1330
01:15:39,540 --> 01:15:44,420
But yeah, and I've always thought, I mean, listen, when I was in my madness stuff, a therapist

1331
01:15:44,420 --> 01:15:47,460
made the most difference in my life of anybody ever.

1332
01:15:47,460 --> 01:15:48,460
I paid him.

1333
01:15:48,460 --> 01:15:51,820
At one point, I was like, I'm not paying you because this is bullshit.

1334
01:15:51,820 --> 01:15:56,140
And he just lit it, you know, like I know, you know, abandoned later.

1335
01:15:56,140 --> 01:15:59,580
But it was an extraordinary connection.

1336
01:15:59,580 --> 01:16:04,180
And I can't see how that connection would have arisen in voluntary mutual aid.

1337
01:16:04,180 --> 01:16:07,780
I mean, I was part of Icarus when that forums were all.

1338
01:16:07,780 --> 01:16:08,780
Yeah.

1339
01:16:08,780 --> 01:16:09,780
I mean, I think I'm not going to be a therapist.

1340
01:16:09,780 --> 01:16:10,780
I mean, I'm not going to be a therapist.

1341
01:16:10,780 --> 01:16:11,780
I mean, I'm not going to be a therapist.

1342
01:16:11,780 --> 01:16:12,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1343
01:16:12,780 --> 01:16:13,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1344
01:16:13,780 --> 01:16:14,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1345
01:16:14,780 --> 01:16:15,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1346
01:16:15,780 --> 01:16:16,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1347
01:16:16,780 --> 01:16:17,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1348
01:16:17,780 --> 01:16:18,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1349
01:16:18,780 --> 01:16:19,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1350
01:16:19,780 --> 01:16:20,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1351
01:16:20,780 --> 01:16:21,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1352
01:16:21,780 --> 01:16:22,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1353
01:16:22,780 --> 01:16:23,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1354
01:16:23,780 --> 01:16:24,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1355
01:16:24,780 --> 01:16:25,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1356
01:16:25,780 --> 01:16:26,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1357
01:16:26,780 --> 01:16:27,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1358
01:16:27,780 --> 01:16:28,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1359
01:16:28,780 --> 01:16:29,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1360
01:16:29,780 --> 01:16:30,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1361
01:16:30,780 --> 01:16:31,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1362
01:16:31,780 --> 01:16:32,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1363
01:16:32,780 --> 01:16:33,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1364
01:16:33,780 --> 01:16:34,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1365
01:16:34,780 --> 01:16:35,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1366
01:16:35,780 --> 01:16:36,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1367
01:16:36,780 --> 01:16:37,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1368
01:16:37,780 --> 01:16:38,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1369
01:16:38,780 --> 01:16:39,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1370
01:16:39,780 --> 01:16:40,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1371
01:16:40,780 --> 01:16:41,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1372
01:16:41,780 --> 01:16:42,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1373
01:16:42,780 --> 01:16:43,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1374
01:16:43,780 --> 01:16:44,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1375
01:16:44,780 --> 01:16:45,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1376
01:16:45,780 --> 01:16:46,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1377
01:16:46,780 --> 01:16:47,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1378
01:16:47,780 --> 01:16:48,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1379
01:16:48,780 --> 01:16:49,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1380
01:16:49,780 --> 01:16:50,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1381
01:16:50,780 --> 01:16:51,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1382
01:16:51,780 --> 01:16:52,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1383
01:16:52,780 --> 01:16:53,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1384
01:16:53,780 --> 01:16:54,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1385
01:16:54,780 --> 01:16:55,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1386
01:16:55,780 --> 01:16:56,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1387
01:16:56,780 --> 01:16:57,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1388
01:16:57,780 --> 01:16:58,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1389
01:16:58,780 --> 01:16:59,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1390
01:16:59,780 --> 01:17:00,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1391
01:17:00,780 --> 01:17:01,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1392
01:17:01,780 --> 01:17:02,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1393
01:17:02,780 --> 01:17:03,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1394
01:17:03,780 --> 01:17:04,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1395
01:17:04,780 --> 01:17:05,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1396
01:17:05,780 --> 01:17:06,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1397
01:17:06,780 --> 01:17:07,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1398
01:17:07,780 --> 01:17:08,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1399
01:17:08,780 --> 01:17:09,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1400
01:17:09,780 --> 01:17:10,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1401
01:17:10,780 --> 01:17:11,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1402
01:17:11,780 --> 01:17:12,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1403
01:17:12,780 --> 01:17:13,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1404
01:17:13,780 --> 01:17:14,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1405
01:17:14,780 --> 01:17:15,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1406
01:17:15,780 --> 01:17:16,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1407
01:17:16,780 --> 01:17:17,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1408
01:17:17,780 --> 01:17:18,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1409
01:17:18,780 --> 01:17:19,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1410
01:17:19,780 --> 01:17:20,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1411
01:17:20,780 --> 01:17:21,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1412
01:17:21,780 --> 01:17:22,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1413
01:17:22,780 --> 01:17:23,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1414
01:17:23,780 --> 01:17:24,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1415
01:17:24,780 --> 01:17:25,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1416
01:17:25,780 --> 01:17:26,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1417
01:17:26,780 --> 01:17:27,780
I'm not going to be a therapist.

1418
01:17:27,780 --> 01:17:29,780
So there's a little stuff on there.

1419
01:17:29,780 --> 01:17:34,780
And yeah, if you're ever interested in the kind of work that I'm currently doing with intentional

1420
01:17:34,780 --> 01:17:39,280
peer support, which I just think is a beautiful framework for thinking about kind of mutual aid

1421
01:17:39,280 --> 01:17:41,780
and connected relationships that have depth.

1422
01:17:41,780 --> 01:17:45,780
Intentionalpearsupport.org has got a lot of information on there.

1423
01:17:45,780 --> 01:17:46,780
Wonderful.

1424
01:17:46,780 --> 01:17:47,780
Thank you so much for joining us.

1425
01:17:47,780 --> 01:17:49,780
Steven Morgan has been great to talk to you.

1426
01:17:49,780 --> 01:17:50,780
Yeah, man.

1427
01:17:50,780 --> 01:17:51,780
What a pleasure.

1428
01:17:51,780 --> 01:17:52,780
Thank you.

1429
01:17:52,780 --> 01:17:54,780
You've been listening to an interview with Steven Morgan.

1430
01:17:54,780 --> 01:17:58,780
Steven is a psychiatric survivor and trainer with intentional peer support.

1431
01:17:58,780 --> 01:18:01,780
And he's worked in peer support for more than two decades.

1432
01:18:01,780 --> 01:18:05,780
He was the project developer for Sotiria House in Vermont.

1433
01:18:05,780 --> 01:18:07,780
That's all the time we have on Madness Radio.

1434
01:18:07,780 --> 01:18:08,780
Thanks for tuning in.

1435
01:18:08,780 --> 01:18:22,780
What does it mean to be called crazy in a crazy world?

1436
01:18:22,780 --> 01:18:24,780
Listen to Madness Radio.

1437
01:18:24,780 --> 01:18:26,780
Voices and visions from outside mental health.

1438
01:18:26,780 --> 01:18:36,780
[Music]

1439
01:18:36,780 --> 01:18:46,780
[BLANK_AUDIO]