A (3:30)

Oh, thank you for that introduction.

B (3:33)

I don't think I've ever interviewed someone that I like, knew of 11 years ago.

A (3:39)

Well, so this is. Don't age me. I'm only getting younger.

B (3:44)

I like to tell myself, you look the same. You look the same.

A (3:46)

Thank you. Thank you. No, I, it is a trip that I've been putting content out into the world for a little while now. I think, like the first sort of YouTube upload I did was like 202006 or 2007 or something. When did you do that's like when I was born.

B (4:07)

No, I'm kidding.

A (4:08)

But, but yeah, no, it's, it's, it's been a beautiful ride and it's, it's always extremely moving to, to connect or, or come across somebody who, who resonated with what I put out. Because it, it's, it's, it comes full circle. It's sort of, it's sort of validating in the sense that like, well, it takes one to know one. And if you resonated, it's because I was just a reflection of something within yourself and so feels good to be here. Thank you.

B (4:41)

We'll see what flows. So I'm curious, how did it start coming online for you? Realizing, like, I can just kind of get into these flow states and wisdom is coming through.

A (4:51)

You want like the real origin of it?

B (4:53)

The real shit? Yeah, let's go.

A (4:55)

Well, it, it definitely began when I started experimenting with altered states consciousness in high school. The first time I tried marijuana, or cannabis as we call it today, it was a state shift that opened up spaces that I wasn't privy to. It sort of simultaneously connected me with my inner child, but also with just a feeling of like rapid fire revelation. So like my love of language met the enthusiasm of my inner child all at once. It was like a new zone that opened up. And of course, I think that when you first experience a moment of a state shift like this, you have. You kind of lose your bearings a little bit. You're like, oh, my God. All of these disclosures are birthing themselves. But does this make any sense? You know, like your. Your sort of ego mind and your non ego mind are sort of wrestling in the. In that altered mode of perception. And so what I started to do was I used to organize these salons in high school with my close friends and kind of inspired by Charles Baudelaire's hashish parties from, like, Paris in the twenties, where all these artists and surrealists. Totally your past life, I think so. And it was like. And this is all intuitive, but it was just like a realization that, at least for me, the cannabis consciousness and what it opened up was not something for parties. It was something sacramental and ceremonial and needed a sacred container, a safe zone to, like, go there, you know, like, like, like structure for dream logic, if that is paradoxical, but somehow makes sense. And. And what we started to do was to record each other, interview each other when we were in altered states of consciousness.

B (6:46)

This was in high school.

A (6:47)

This was at 16. Oh, my God. Yeah. And now I. I was already somebody that was obsessed with filmmaking since I was a kid. I wanted to be a director. I loved movies. I used to make skits and direct short films starring my brother and starring my cousins and whatnot. I never put myself on camera until I started experimenting with cannabis and wanted evidence for my future sober mind to look upon my sort of unleashed self, if that makes sense. You know, D.H. lawrence talks about, unleash the free, brave, reckless gods that live inside of you. And it was like. What happened to me in these altered states was that I felt like I became the professor of literature. I became like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, you know, the world. The words leaped to mind without having to be called for, what you call the channeling. It's like things I read in certain books, interesting quotes and ideas from films, and I just. Everything crystallized together. And so I was. We would. I wanted to record this because the ego part of me, the part that was like, you know, am I. Do I make sense? Will I be shamed for what I'm saying? Am I. Am I incoherent? You know, am I rambling? Am I out of control? Am I on drugs?

B (7:55)

Especially when you're high, you're like, is that genius or was that just a ramble? Exactly.

A (7:59)

But I was systematic in the evaluation. I was like, well, let's record this. Yeah, and let's watch it later with a different lens. You know, I think Tim Leary used to say, you know, write stoned, edit sober, or write sober and edit stoned in other ways. Like they bring different lenses, bring Kronos and Kairos to everything you do, and evaluate it through both filters. So when I watched the videos, I kind of had a revelation. I had a revelation because it's not that I didn't recognize the person through the lens or on the screen. It was simply that, like, I seemed infinitely looser than I often felt like. It was this strange thing where I was like, normally I feel like I'm in my head and like overthinking things and socially awkward or shy. But then I was like loose. It was like, it was like existential lubrication or something, you know. And what was interesting was that it told my vigilant self, you know, because I think we're like bifurcated beings. We're not, you know, when we're in flow, action and awareness become one. But normally they're separate, you know, they're like the thinking self and the second guessing self. You know, the self editor is like trying to control the actions that we perform in the world. And so what this systematic way of evaluating myself in a fugue state did is it told my ego or my vigilant self, hey, man, in those containers you're not needed. I'm perfectly safe. Like I'm safe, like allow, you know, And I connect that, I think, to what a lot of like shy kids discover when they join a theater class. You know, they're like, oh my God, I so insecure and so introverted and I can't make any friends. And I. No, no, no, no, I'm always in my head. And then I joined a theater class and it was a revelation, you know, like, what was the revelation? Well, the revelation was you fell outside of space and time. You fell outside of your ego, you fell outside of your insecurities and your second guessing. You allowed yourself to dance like no one was watching because you lost the faculty of the brain that could imagine yourself in the eyes of others. And so that was fucking freedom, you know. It was freedom. And you know, I think the difference between the mystic and the madman is the scorecard, you know. So I like to say I became addicted to that freedom from self. But I also didn't want to go off the rails. So I just brought discipline to my ecstasy, even from that young age, you know.

B (10:26)

So do you feel that having the camera there was what gave you the container to let yourself flow? Or do you. Or were you getting into those states, camera or not?

A (10:35)

You know, I think that the camera was part of building a scaffolding that was part of, like, creating the permission. Like, we're creating a setup, we're opting into a boundary, we're saying action and cut. You know, like the stage, the camera. But I think another big part of it, at least for me, you know? Cause these are all, like, putting together pieces like in a jigsaw puzzle. And you can put all the pieces together, but you still see the lines. And I think for me, the cannabis was the thing that erased the lines of all the pieces and created something that was greater than the sum of its parts. And so I have the same birthday as Bob Marley, February 6th.

B (11:20)

Aquarius. Of course.

A (11:21)

Yes. And in the Rastafarian ethic, cannabis is very much sacramental and puts you in conversation with. With the gods. And so, you know, in an age of psychedelic and entheogenic exploration, you know, like, you read about, I don't know, that famous essay by Henry Munn, the Mushrooms of Language, which was about the relationship between psilocybin and linguistic discourse. You know, ecstatic verbalization, ecstatic articulation. But for me, it was. It was. It was cannabis. Similar to a lot of the tradition of jazz music, freestyle rappers. You know, these are people that engaged with cannabis for verbal fluency. But in any case, yeah, I became ceremoniously dedicated to creating spaces where I could be free in a way that I was not. Perhaps in the default world.

B (12:14)

Have you always known, deep down inside, that you are here to speak on stages, to write books, to share your wisdom and story with the world? But the thing is, you feel. Feel like you are still not a confident speaker. Well, I got you, girl. I've created my Speak with Soul method that has trained over 3,000 people to go from awkward to fully confident speaker and get book deals, keynote speaking engagements, and so much more in just 21 days. So this is my flagship method that goes into aspects of speaking I have never seen any other teacher talk about. So going into the tone, texture, quality of your voice, what type of speaker you are, whether it's more motivational, inspirational, aspirational, how to tell your story, the hero's arc, how to have a captivating presence, all of the unseen, unspoken body language that is taking place, and how to then translate it into what we end with recording an intro for your future podcast. So I have seen incredible transformations from the students who have done the chorus. We'll. We'll share some of the testimonials so you can see for yourself. And I did not start off speaking the way that I am right now. I did not start off as a solo caster keynote speaker. In fact, if you go back to the first episode of this podcast in 2017, so almost eight years ago now, you'll see my tone of voice was way higher. I wasn't as confident, I wasn't as grounded. And now so many people are like, I just listen to your podcast. I just like hearing you speak. And that is the difference that you can have by really diving into your speaking. So I reverse engineered what I did for myself of how I shifted from, you know, I was saying the right things, but just a different level of grounding and embodiment that I have now. And I put it all together in a 21 day, super accessible course that you can start at any time. So head over to speakwithsoulcourse.com we'll have that link in the show notes. We also have a special discount for you for 20% off with code podcast, so be sure to use it and get started so the world can hear your story. All right, let's get back into the episode. It's so true. I mean, I first smoked cannabis in high school, but we would just laugh and I never really touched it for over a decade.

A (14:34)

Yeah.

B (14:34)

And then it was like two years ago or so, I was in Trinidad, which is like Rasta that. And I was with my Caribbean friend and we were like, driving through the mountains and she was like, you should just try smoking some. I was like, whatever. I had just gotten divorced. I was like, fuck it, I don't even care.

A (14:48)

Yeah.

B (14:49)

And I was hearing music for the first time. I feel how it was, like, meant to be heard.

A (14:54)

Sure. That's. I feel the same.

B (14:55)

And so many things, like Disney movies, all these. I'm like, oh, everyone was on psychedelics. Like, it all makes sense. And I was hearing, like, the ad libs and the layers and the progressions and the chords and like, I'm like, holy shit. Has music always been so amazing? Like, how. How are people just listening to in the background? How are, you know, like, all the times I saw, like, this is a song. It's a song, you know, And I was so deep in it and like hearing like, the texture of their voices, the tone of their voices, which, ugh, like, just was even deeper than. Than the words. And it was in. Because I'm such a verbose, I'm such a linguistic person, but for me, it was like going beyond the words into the feeling. And then I was like, damn, like, music is so dope. Like, how do you make music? You know? And so I started going on YouTube how to produce Kick Ass. And it was actually here in Amsterdam two years ago that I started producing and made my album Good for you, infusing Persian and Afrobeats and all these different things that came really easy to me. And it wasn't. If it wasn't for the ganja. Yeah, I would not be here, so I'm so grateful for that plant.

A (15:57)

Yeah. No, I appreciate you saying that. And especially, you know, there's music and then there's music when you're high on cannabis, which becomes a religious experience. And I think it has to do with the increased suggestibility of an altered state of consciousness mediated by cannabis. Now, normally, suggestibility is a liability. You know, if you're suggestible, you can be easily manipulated, you can be taken advantage of. Like the world teaches you, don't be suggestible or gullible unless it's to buy products that capitalism is selling you. But in general, like, you're taught to be vigilant. It's unsafe to be suggestible, to be too porous, to be too easily penetrated by your immediate environment. But in the controlled, sacred space, you know, like, of music, you know, in the container that I was creating for myself, suggestibility was the point. You know, McKenna used to say, you become what you behold in the psychedelic state. You know, becoming what you behold means that, like, the separation between you and that which you're experiencing disappears. You know, subject, object and process become one thing. It's an erotic act. You know, like I often say, like felt reality of immediate experience is eros. You know, it's sensuous and erotic. And it's like me and the music and the setting are one thing. And so I've become very much a very discerning and exceptional curator of my set and setting. I like to say that living in Amsterdam, I have a mobile studio on wheels. You know, I take my wearable speaker, my colored lenses, you know, my electric bike ride, and I go into the countryside and I have a flow state in kinesthetic motion. You know, I experience omnidirectional freedom. You know, I can go at the speed of agency. I can be imprinted by the environment. I can respond to the environment. And I'm swimming In an atemporal zone. I'm in the same place you are when you watch a movie, but in my normal waking state, you know, and it's, you know, I am an ecstatic. I've realized that now, but I'm a responsible ecstatic. You know, I'm interested in what Jamie Wheal calls a knobs and levers approach to the shaping of your subjectivity. You know, like a dj. Like, I want to tune the mood, you know, I want to engage the technical material of subjectivity itself. And it's no coincidence that I'm a filmmaker and that my first love is cinema, because cinema is a technology of subjectivity. Right. Like cinema is not showing you the world in the way journalism tries to show you the world. It's not about objective empiricism, but about poetic truth, or what Werner Herzog calls ecstatic truth, the truth beyond the literal grid, the truth of poetry and music and song and love. Those eight temporal moments that give meaning to our lives. And so I. I feel like I've created containers to pay regular visitation, to pay reverence to those zones. You know, I'm like a priest of. Of the ecstatic, but in my own open source way, you know, and. And not to tout my own book, but that's, that's what the book explores, you know, and all my videos have always explored, you know, so I think. I think you. You recognize that clearly.

B (19:09)

Yeah. And I definitely resonate with the archetype of the ecstatic deeply. And. Yeah. And I want to touch base back on making life a movie, because I know that's something that you're so passionate about and embody, but have you ever felt like when you're in these kind of. I'm going to call it channeling states of consciousness?

A (19:24)

Yeah.

B (19:25)

Do you feel like it's always you, it's just your left and your right hemispheres of your brain communicating? Or do you ever feel like you're channeling from somewhere else, whether it's your highest self or these philosophers or something beyond you?

A (19:36)

Yeah. Yeah. And I know that you talk about the past idea, and that's very compelling and very evocative, you know, the felt experience. And I don't make an objective claim about this for everybody. Perhaps it's different for me. It just feels like me when I become pure intuition and pure presence. So it's who I am without the worrying mind, without the monkey mind that is, for whatever reason, overly oriented around negative outcome and what if. So it's like when I'm Free of that. There's. I don't want to say recklessness, because I'm not doing this at the edge of a skyscraper without a railing.

B (20:34)

I'm doing this next podcast in a.

A (20:36)

Safe, beautiful, comfortable environment. I like to call it the Inflatable Castle for adults. You know, it's like, yes, I want to create a metaphorical place where we can do backflips against the wall and not fracture our neck and become paralyzed, you know? And the understanding of that is that I need it to be feral. I need to unleash the holy fool. This has become a very powerful archetype for me. You know, in Venezuela, we used to say, when the holy fool. When the fool is unleashed, it's when you succumb to absurd and irresistible hilarity. You know, I'm talking about, like, the laughing fit to end all laughing fits. Nature's epileptoid catharsis. The best term I ever heard to describe a laughing fit. But it's when insights similar to comedy, they arrive in roundabout ways, and usually that makes us laugh. And I just. Yeah, I just feel like it's. It's the truest expression of my essence, if that makes sense.

B (21:42)

Do you ever feel like when you're saying something, you go back and you disagree with what you said?

A (21:46)

No. Huh.

B (21:49)

So it's always been, like, full truth and stays resonant. Interesting.

A (21:53)

Yeah.

B (21:54)

And do you feel like you're channeling from your emotions or you feel like it's somewhere beyond emotion?

A (22:01)

I think it's emotions acquire discursive capacity, so feeling takes on rhapsodic language. It's not just the mind, it's definitely the emotional body.

B (22:20)

Besides cannabis, do you have any practices to get you into that state?

A (22:24)

Yeah, I prioritize getting really good sleep. So nightlife is not really a part of my life now. I think of myself as an elite athlete for the art that I create. And so I really take care of my sleep, I really take care of my diet. I really take care of my physique and my training regimen. I don't use cannabis daily because I also have to respect metabolic patterns and rest and recovery cycles with flow and respecting the biology and what it takes to recover. So cannabis might happen a few times a week, but not every day. And that way you avoid also tolerance, and you keep it fresh every time. And, you know, those are things that you have to be really disciplined about, because when you love something, you want to do it every day. And I had to hit the limits of biology to realize I'm like, okay, this doesn't work if you want it every day. Like, you have to respect the cycles. And so I would say all of those things play a role ultimately in that when I'm ready to unleash, I know that I can trust the physiology also and the muscle memory. Cause I've created a system around it.

B (23:30)

Yeah. And I feel like movement. Like. You were talking about how you go biking and walking.

A (23:34)

Oh, yeah. I can't get high and just sit. Sit there.

B (23:37)

Yeah.

A (23:37)

I mean, you know, like. No. Unless it's like watching a movie.

B (23:40)

You're very vata. Did you know that? Your dosha. I think I told you that.

A (23:43)

Yeah. Okay.

B (23:44)

So you need to stay in movement.

A (23:45)

I need to stay in movement. And I like. I use the word hover a lot. So, like, when I'm in the zone, I like. I like to hover. Kind of like my version of the whirling dervish, you know, I'm not, like, spinning in circles.

B (23:58)

Whirling dervish?

A (23:59)

Yeah.

B (23:59)

Past life, possibly.

A (24:01)

There you go. There you go. Yeah.

B (24:03)

That's how we knew each other. Ancient Persia.

A (24:05)

Yeah. But I like. Yeah, I like. I just like to do that. It's part of the. It's like. Yeah, it's like this. There's a subtle dancing, you know, a bopping, sort of swimming. Yeah.

B (24:16)

Because I think the mind reflects the state of the body. So when we're sitting, the mind gets sedentary.

A (24:21)

No, no bueno. And anxious.

B (24:24)

But. And I also think some of us have more energy circulating through our body, and that's why we become anxious, because we're not moving. And it's the way our society is set up. And for me, once I start walking, it's like something about the rhythmic pattern of, like, left, right, left, right. That the mind can just start to, like, undo all the knots.

A (24:41)

Yeah.

B (24:41)

And first it's like surface level thoughts, of course. And then you get into this kind of state, you're like, oh, this is good. This is something.

A (24:47)

Well said.

B (24:48)

But then I find sometimes, like, if I don't catch it in that moment, it's gone.

A (24:52)

Yeah. And that's where it's been. Incredible technique, skill. That early experiment with, like, wanting to verify that what transpired when I loosened the seatbelt of the psyche a little bit, you know, or the vigilance, you know, and I allowed myself to go into cruising altitude. Turned then into a skill of, like, feeling like, oh, this is an interesting way of capturing some of the starlight. Maybe people will resonate for this, you know, I've always been a very good writer, but I felt that, that there was power in my, in my performative presence or in my spoken word. I realized was in high school I got like the speaking award and the debate award. Like I was getting recognized already for a particular presence when I was passionate about a subject matter. But having the camera around also meant not losing the thing, you know, like having some of that insight, capturing lightning in a bottle, which is paradoxical. But again, I think it only was possible because I made a deal with the medium and I was like, this is not going to be like home video footage. This is not going to be captured in a way that is trying to get an objective capture of the situation from the outside. I need to capture something that captures the feeling from the inside, yet recorded from the outside, paradoxically, which is what cinema is supposed to do. I can't see what is inside the actor, but I can capture the actor's exterior with maximal intensity so that I can read his interior. So then I developed a sort of aesthetic around how I would capture this content, how I would edit this content, you know, so that it was less about what you were seeing externally and what it was hinting at internally, which is hopefully what, what you felt, you know.

B (26:49)

This episode is sponsored by Better Help. So let's be real. How many times have you turned to a girl's bathroom for advice? Or maybe just the person doing your nails or like, hey, what do you think I should do with my life? And while people may have interesting answers, it's not really the same as getting guidance from a licensed therapist. So I highly recommend going to someone who can really listen to you, ask you deep, deeper questions. I feel like advice is not really what we need, but more someone listening to us. And this is where therapy comes in. So I love BetterHelp because it's completely online, it's flexible, you can pause your subscription at any time, and they have over 30, 000 therapists. So it's the world's largest online therapy platform. And you basically fill out a questionnaire, they link you up with a therapist they think you'll like, and you can also swap them out at any time. So I've loved doing it at points in my life that I just really needed someone to listen. And it's quite just different than a friend. And I just feel every human on earth needs this. So our listeners get 10% off their first month@betterhelp.com Sahara that's betterhelp h lp.com Sahara and you can Find that link in the show notes. So trust your intuition, trust your inner wisdom, trust your inner guidance. Totally. It was, it was the full. But I think it was like a presence of God is what I felt. And it's like, I think people can feel that even when you're speaking. It's like this like possibility that anything can happen. And I feel like when you're witnessing someone just like go into these octaves of the mind, it starts to, it's like we mirror each other, right? And then so you start to think more, more freely. And I'm, you know, so many listeners, they want to speak but they feel like, you know, sometimes I get into these channeled states but I can't just like, like show up on camera or on stage and get there. So what was that process like for you from going from I'm on a walk and here's the camera and here I am to like, I'm on brain games and there's all these set people that are taking me probably out of my flow sleep. I have to redo things and I still have to tap back in. What was that like?

A (28:46)

Yeah. So my first job after film school where I double majored in philosophy and film was for a cable network that Al Gore started called Current tv. And it was this independent news and information network for young adults. User generated content pioneer, kind of like early YouTube but on cable television. And I ended up submitting a short film with a friend of mine. We got hired as presenters and at first it was like, we made it, we're moving to Hollywood, we're gonna be on TV. Like it was like, I mean, we were like 24 and we thought we're famous. But it was nerve wracking as hell because it went from like recording myself with my friends when I was in altered states and feeling loose to like, I'm on a set with 25 crew members and lights and makeup. And I remember some of those early recordings were so cringe for me even to watch the playback because I just looked so nervous. Like you just saw in my eyes that I was just terrified. Just like the opposite of a flow state. And I just hated the feeling. And I remember that I had to figure out a solution to that energetically. And the solution ended up being that me and my friend at the time we decided why don't we ask them to make us co hosts and make it a show where the two of us are together, you know, because we had gotten hired together, maybe that we can entrain off of each other's Nervous systems to keep it loose on set. So, you know, you had to develop techniques under the artificiality of that context to try to be authentic and be real. And then the nature of what we spoke about, we tried to make authentic and real. And then in the end it became also chops, like professionalizing that, you know, you're not always going to have ideal conditions, but can you still deliver if you're getting paid for it? But it's still a trade off, right? Because it's, it's your, I don't want to say prostituting your gifts, but like you are figuring out how to take your gift and like package it for the system, you know. But I was happy to make that negotiation at the time. And I still would record my own videos on the side. And the early YouTube stuff was what I would do on the weekends and stuff. And then after five years of current, you know, I felt like it was an exceptional opportunity to see if I could professionalize or do something in the world off of this thing that I loved doing with self expression. And then Brain Games was, you know, a series of fortunate accidents and serendipities and meeting the right person at the right time. Having the early Shatafa videos that I was doing and saying, hey, this is what I'm up to. They were looking for a host for this new show. I was like, I used to work for Al Gore and now I'm doing these videos. And sure enough, they gave me the chance. And I realized that the exposure from that would be extraordinary and would open up freedom in the future. And that was a very.

B (31:31)

And that was on like National Geographic, National Geographic Channel.

A (31:34)

And that was like, you know, early call times and lots of makeup and uncomfortable shoes.

B (31:40)

Could you smoke cannabis for that or.

A (31:42)

No, no, no, no, no. That was just like Phon punch in, punch out. But it was, you know, you know what that was? That was taking some of the joy and effervescence that was in my muscle memory from my experiences in altered states and just bringing it to grandmas and families. And it was wholesome. It was PG13 Jason, you know, PG Jason. And I'm happy to do that because I think that like, like the autotelic joy that comes from altered states isn't necessarily transgressive. I know it's made out to be. I know people have this idea about like psychedelic experience and altered states of consciousness. It's transgressive, you know, it's like, oh, you're going to become an addict or it's going to be Problematic, you know, but that's like people eating food and becoming obese, you know, I mean, it really. Or watching garbage for your brain versus great cinema. I mean, discernment matters, but at the end of the day, like if these states of consciousness are doorways to the numinous and to autotelic joy and to the inner child and to transformative healing and to poetry, and if human culture was forged even from as early as the Greeks, from the visions that came out of these altered states, then the truth is that if I could be an interface or medium between that subversive joy and making it palatable and friendly through a mainstream vehicle and talk about the brain, talk about awe and wonder and shake people out of the Matrix in a perfectly accessible way, I was happy to do that. And I did it for five seasons and then I did it on keynote stages around the world. And it was great and it was wonderful. But I think now I'm just, just knee deep and in my own, I guess you call it spiritual journey. But I'm very much back in exploring immediate experience and seeing where it takes me.

B (33:46)

Right. And I feel that it becomes you. You know, whenever you work with any kind of psychedelic or medicine, you remember everything and it becomes you. And you take what really continues to sit with you. And then there's becomes almost no difference between you and that. And you can almost look at the world anytime how you would look at it in psychedelics. So look at the tree through that lens and so it's always available. And I also feel people in that mainstream national geographic cable watching world wanted that consciousness but probably would have never gone on that journey themselves. And so they were getting the frequency of that through you. They're like, I really resonate with what he has to say and I don't know why exactly.

A (34:28)

Yeah, they used to call me, I used to sort of self call myself a wonder junkie. That was a term coined by Carl Sagan, who I adore, who by the way, was a very, very much a lover of cannabis. This has been like widely published since then. He wrote this essay under a pseudonym back then about how much he loved cannabis and the credit he gave it for some of the philosophical ideas and reflections and whatnot. And many musicians I adore, Allen Ginsberg, the beat poets. I mean, there's a lineage of like thinkers I resonate for whom altered states were part of their repertoire, you know, and. But yeah, I used to, when I first came across that term wonder junkie, it was, it was in the novel Contact, which was Then the Jodie Foster film. And that was how he described her character. Somebody who just wanted to know if there was something out there in the universe. Somebody who was fueled by wonderful. That's an altered state. Wonder is an altered state, and so is awe. You know, in positive psychology, they describe awe as an experience of such perceptual expansion. Sounds pretty psychedelic to me. Such perceptual vastness that all your mental models of the world, the been theres and seen thats of the adult mind, the jadedness, the habituation, the deadening effects of habit, that all collapses, dissolves in annihilating glory. You're forced into a state of humbling accommodation. It's like whatever you were fucking complaining about falls away in the face of the mysterium tremendum. I remember reading an article by a guy called Ross Anderson about the Hubble Space Telescope and the new James Webb Telescope. I read this article in 2011. I can still recite lines from it because it was so powerful. But again, he captured this altered state very well as well. He said that. That the Hubble, by putting it up in space, we human beings had created this externalized eye. And now we were able to mainline space and time through the optic nerve. Right. And that the images of the Hubble, like the deep field photographs of the universe, through the sheer aesthetic force of those images, those discoveries, we were able to distill the complex abstractions of astrophysics into singular expressions of color and light. Vindicating Keats famous couplet, beauty is truth. Truth is beauty. So for me, it's like it's science or it's psychedelics. It's awe or it's wonder. But the point is, it's about, like, tapping into that felt sense of the mystery, the felt sense of the mesmerism. Just like that. There's more to it than fetching water, chopping wood and paying our bills, you know, death and taxes. Taxes, no. Awe and wonder. Yes. You know, so what else?

B (37:21)

You know, literally, I remember when I was recently in Egypt and I went to this temple called Dendera, which is the Hathor temple. And it was so awe encompassing that walking through it, I felt such deep grief of how did we lose this? Like, this was the center stone of our society. Like, this is why we lived for that state of awe that came into going through, into a temple that, like, your problems, you're like, today we're in these boxes all the time. You're in your apartment, then you're on your phone and this. And like Your problem seems so big because you're in a box and you go into a temple and you're reminded of just the vastness of life and the mysteries of the universe and why we're here. And you're looking up and you're seeing Newton, the constellations and wondering how you fit into, into all of that. And it's like, who the cares? And we've lost touch with that. So our problems seem so enormous and we become so tiny when it's like the opposite. And it's like how like it made me so sad of thinking about, about all the people who maybe like touch these little places and they're like, what's the point? You know, I'm never going to make money doing that. Like this is superfluous. It doesn't matter. I know, what's the point? And it's like the inner child that's killed again and again and like you have and it still comes back in these little moments and then you're just like, like I can't monetize it so it doesn't matter. And it's like, do you feel there is some sort of agenda or something that is making our society become like this? Or it's just like a natural progression of capitalism? Like why? How do we get here?

A (38:48)

It's interesting. Well, one of the, one of the chapters in my book is called Feeling Groovy, A Treatise on Subversive Joy. And it talks about the counterculture in the 1960s that was like our own pagan revolution and return to altered states and the rebellion against the buttoned up 1950s and whatnot. And there is a case to be made that the war on drugs was really the war on consciousness and a form of consciousness that seemed incompatible with what the system at the time felt was the most optimal for economic growth. Interestingly, capitalism has done, has solved that problem now by simply co opting its own criticism. And now we have capitalism selling us psychedelic meditation courses, you know, which by the way is better than banning those states of consciousness. I mean, I think there's a cynicism when things become commercialized. But I often wonder, under the current terms and conditions of the world, do you prefer they just stay illegal and underground or do you prefer being arrested or being sold an Ayahuasca retreat? I know there's ethical questions about how these things are run and even monetizing these ecstatic practices, but I'm constantly trying to negotiate how I feel about that because I do see the value of an economic system that has allowed humanity to rise up in this way. The truth is that today more people die from suicide than from natural disasters and armed conflict combined. The world is actually safer than it's ever been, less violent than it's ever been. You know, child mortality rates are some of the lowest that have ever been. I mean, we fly through the air in marvelous airplanes. We enjoy wonderful technology. We can express ourselves creatively. We have civil liberties, you know, in ways that we never. I mean, so I see, like, incredible progress, and I see the system of trade and capitalism as something that has made it so that we don't just massacre each other all the time, you know, So I see the value of that. And I guess my hope, rather than wanting to cut the system at the knees and burn it all down, I'm more thinking, how do we leverage some of the latest things that are coming into the fray, like AI and whatnot. And as other things like biology and material science become information technologies, that maybe the price point for those things will come down to zero. Maybe we will move into a world where labor is obsolete because 5% of the workforce can create 1,000% economic growth. And everybody is on some kind of like, incredible scholarship or universal basic income situation. We all live like university students and artists with a sort of stipend given to us by AI, and we just live like philosopher kings.

B (41:44)

That's a. I'm signing up for that reality. Thank you.

A (41:48)

But, yeah, but we're dreaming it into existence. Yeah.

B (41:52)

I mean, we're already living it.

A (41:53)

Yeah, exactly. Like our life. Maybe we're. Wouldn't have been possible, you know, and more and more people. I think, you know, the fact that I can sort of. That I've been able to make a living as a philosopher. Yeah. Like a public intellectual, like, sharing ideas and expressing myself filmically, you know, like a poet would. But instead of being a homeless poet, you know, I can make it work in the system. I think there's a nice marriage there that involves participating under the current conditions while striving to make things better by agitating people into awakening.

B (42:29)

Yeah. And I feel like it's steps of consciousness. Like, if we look at, we have the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, the information and this conceptual era that we're in right now. And it's like sometimes even individually, we have to get sick of our own. You know, we have to get sick of like, am I really going to live Groundhog Day again and again and again? Or I'm going to take this wisdom from this podcast and actually go out on my bike and fuck around and find out and see what happens, you know, and it's like sometimes we do have to hit a certain level of rock bottom to be like, this path isn't working and I need to create some sort of change.

A (43:00)

I agree.

B (43:00)

Yeah. So I want to talk about making life a movie, because I know that's something that you share about a lot and it's something you're writing about in your new book.

A (43:09)

Oh, yeah.

B (43:10)

So I feel a lot of people talk about, like, main character energy, which is. Which is kind of that, like being. Being the main character and also being the director and the producer and the writer. And you're also casting everyone in your life. Good, bad, ugly. So how do you see your life as the movie that you're living?

A (43:27)

Yeah, I've heard this term main character energy.

B (43:30)

You give total main character energy, by the way.

A (43:33)

Well, but I think. Yeah, we need the. I hadn't thought about it. So I think everybody is the main character of their own experience. You're all the center of your own experience. I'm more interested in the. The director role than main character energy because the directing role gives you stewardship over your own experience. There's a great line by a guy called David Lenson. He talks about this phrase used in the 60s, and it's called. Well, he says the 1965 phrase of dismissal, get out of my movie, describes this heightened stewardship of internal life. Okay. The cannabis user, he says, wants to take control of his or her consciousness and what it contains at any given moment. What is disliked must be avoided, but what is enjoyed can be enjoyed with contemplative exactitude. So it just means, here's the frame. What do I want to put in the frame? You know, and as a filmmaker, that's what a filmmaker does. He directs attention. It's the art of directional attention, directional awareness. You know. Now, it's not about just putting what's in the frame, but then once you put what's in the frame, submit to it. Because if you're already thinking what you're going to put in the next frame in the sequence, then you're not present. So it's between directing and surrendering. You're dancing in that paradox. Control and surrender, structured recklessness, control and letting go. But, yeah, I just think layer your field of awareness the way you layer a scene in a movie with Final Cut. Think of the music, think of the cinematography, think of the setting, think of the people. But then once you're in there now, it's improv. Like you're not scripting every moment, you're just staging the fertile conditions for something emergent and coherent to come through.

B (45:26)

And there's sort of an ownership of your own life that happens with that lens of like, you know, the camera doesn't see what's right here and you can live your life like that, whereas most of us are just like, oh, well, it's all here. So I just have to, like, accept. And I think even in the spiritual world, we think accepting just means taking a seat back and not changing.

A (45:43)

Yeah, No, I think I'm all about radical agency and aesthetic sovereignty and stewardship of internal life and reclamation of the inner screen, I think, is very empowering.

B (45:52)

Yeah. Do you believe there's anything destined or it's all free will?

A (45:59)

I think the answer is paradoxical. And so that's what's interesting about paradox, is thesis and antithesis. Is it free will or is it destiny? And that shows, I think, a dimensional limitation in our capacity to understand what's going on fully. More interesting than thesis versus antithesis is synthesis. But synthesis is dimensionally above and it reconciles paradox. And so I think that's what's going on. It's beyond whether it's destiny or free will. It's beyond. It's dimensionally beyond maybe what we can conceptually understand.

B (46:40)

Right. Like if you're shooting a movie in a park, like, maybe some homeless guy comes through and it's like, okay, you can shift, but you can't get rid of the homeless guy. You know, you just work with it, incorporate it into the art.

A (46:50)

Very much so. I mean, in creativity, what's interesting is I also think that, like, you know, one of the things we're learning with AI is these systems work or pull from a mathematical universe that sits alongside, like, what we call the physical universe. And they call it a multi dimensional latent space. Latent as in a state of pure potential. And this multidimensional latent space has over 500 dimensions. And when you prompt something, you're like punching in coordinates from this multidimensional latent space and through a process of diffusion, pulling it into the visible realm or the material realm. And I think that you could, could, you know, if reality is something similar to that or analogous to that, you know, the mystery of whether matter is real and what's real and whatnot. But, like, maybe we also exist in a multi dimensional latent space at any given moment. And so whether we go here, whether we go there, there's an element that has destiny and agency. And also, like, like A garden of forking paths of possible things that can be instantiated at any given moment. And so, in a way, if you have the right intention, you kind of can't go wrong, you know, like, that's why I love improv so much. So, like. Like, I go into improv with agency, but I also am privy to happy accidents. But I have faith in those happy accidents. So does that mean that I had. That I had. That there was destiny, or rather that there was a free will in that I was willing those happy accidents to happen? We're back in the paradox. Because if the happy accidents just happened, were they accident or were they predestined? But I went into them knowing they were going to happen. You know, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about how something is great art has to be both surprise and inevitable, which is the same paradox between free will and. And predestined destiny. You know, it's like a great poem, a great work of art, a great moment of synchronicity has to make you go, oh, my God, I never saw that coming. And at the same time. But of course, that's the only way that could go. And I think that resolves this question of free will versus destiny.

B (49:07)

I feel like looking into our past, at least for me, to be like it was all destined, it all had to be exactly as it was. Gives a feeling of. Of peace, I would say. You know, I know when I've sat with medicine, looking at the things of my life of like, it had to be this way for you to become this version of you.

A (49:24)

Sure.

B (49:25)

But is it for sure having to continue in the future to be sort of way. I don't know.

A (49:29)

Well, maybe it's more like there's an infinite amount of ways to arrive where you always were going to arrive. So it's like. And what I mean by that is that no matter which way you go. Right, Right. Surprise. Didn't see that coming. And of course, that's exactly what I had to learn. Maybe things have a mythopoetic quality where the process, the archetypal process, is already written, but then we have a biographical dimension where the way it actually played out, it was just one out of a million different rolls of the dice. But the archetypal sort of pattern was going to be no matter what.

B (50:08)

I do feel that. I do feel we do have an overarching direction, theme of our life. And then it's like different stories that play it out, maybe different timelines that we could have taken, different dances, we could have done with different people. But ultimately you will learn what you needed to learn in this lifetime.

A (50:25)

Yeah.

B (50:26)

Yeah. So tell us more about your new book that is coming out.

A (50:30)

Sure. So I. I never wrote a book before. I was very intimidated by the process, but. But then I just, you know, I've been. I've been practicing my writing process in. In the oral tradition. You know, I've been. I've been waxing rhapsodic for 15 years.

B (50:48)

Yeah. Do you freestyle rap, by the way?

A (50:50)

Well, I think my videos are freestyle rap.

B (50:52)

I think you need a rap album.

A (50:54)

Well, but I mean, I just. I think I rap in. In my own.

B (50:57)

You do?

A (50:58)

With my own cadence. But. But what's. You know, I've never scripted a video in my life, so there's a. There's a. There's a capacity for extemporaneous discursiveness, and there's a lot of ideas and intuitions and a lot of books and references and analogies. I have a distinct worldview, and I could probably. You pick one of my videos from my collection, and I could just give you a whole take on that video. So I thought, okay, maybe I do the book version of Shots of Awe. You know, it's not going to have a clear linear arc. It's just going to be a series of essays, ecstatic essays, that each one is going to feel like a kind of expanded lyrical transcription of one of my Shots of Awe. But I didn't want to work with a ghost writer, and I didn't want to sit there and, like, type the whole thing from A to B. So I thought I would just dictate the whole thing. And I actually am one of those people that has embraced AI fully. And this is not typing on AI. Hey, write my book for me. No, this is not that. But this is using AI transcription, which means. Means getting into a flow state, sometimes high as fuck, and just rhapsodizing for five minutes straight, a pure monologue, having it immediately transcribed and then be like, okay, where can we add some subchapters to break this down? Now I have a digital research team. I'm like, hey, find some interesting academic thinkers that verify some of these intuitions. And then, like, reading through it, and then, like, then I might go revise it to make sure that, you know, that if there's grammatical, whatever sentence structures that I can modify. But. But it's really been an iterative loop and a fast feedback loop. Then at some point I feel like I don't know where I end, and it begins, to be honest, you know, And But. But what I do know is that after five months of working in this way, I feel something that feel that I create something that feels like. Like an authentic reflection of everything I want to say, you know, and it's called Sacred Derangement and the title is By Design because normally people think of derangement as a problematic thing, but like, the surrealists have a tradition of deranging the senses to reveal something new. Right. Shatter. To reveal. And that's kind of the idea behind Sacred Derangement. This is a sacred shattering to reveal. And the subtitle is A Field guide to Outrageous Creativity, Radical Self Expression and Living in Awe. So that kind of captures it. And then I just, I get to nerd out on a lot of, like, intellectual ideas that I love. And a lot of them, but they all kind of rhyme, you know, whether it's aesthetic distance or the case for ecstatic perception or. I have a chapter called the Movie of Consciousness, which is all about cannabis. I have chapters on flow and cycling and omnidirectional freedom. I mean, what you see there is like, like, oh, yeah, this is how Jason's been like, experimenting and creating a cartography of his modes and modalities. That's what it feels like.

B (53:52)

And I feel like that's what a beautiful book is. It's a crystallization of who you are.

A (53:56)

Very much so.

B (53:56)

It's like handing someone, here's a piece of my consciousness.

A (53:58)

Yeah, very much so.

B (54:00)

Okay, well, we will have that link below.

A (54:02)

Thanks. Yeah.

B (54:04)

Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and channel. I feel like my 23 year old self is like, ah, full circle moment. So thank you for being here. Thank you for continuing to create and be such a living example of Dharma. I feel like, not that I feel like some people get into these phases where they're creating a lot of content and they drop it. And you've been so continuous on your path and really a pioneer for all of us. Ecstatic channels. So thank you so much for being you.

A (54:29)

Well, thank you, thank you. And I appreciate you very much. And I feel you're vessel also. Like there's such a. You're such a clean, clear vessel. And it's nice that. Yeah. That you resonated with me so long ago and that you are very much one of us.

B (54:48)

Yes. Well, thank you. And we will have his book, his social links and everything else listed below. So this is such a good conversation to share with your friends. Be like, I feel like I get into this flow state. What do you think about this? Like, let's talk about about sacred, derangement and ecstatic. There's so many freaking words here if someone's new at English. By the way, this is a very good podcast to expand your vocabulary, and you do a lot in Spanish. And I used to love watching your Spanish videos because it would help me with my Spanish per uno, soy Latina. The next one we'll do in Spanish. Gracias. So share this with your friends, have a conversation, and be sure to review this podcast wherever you're listening. Listening to it. It's on YouTube, so you can watch the video on Spotify, Apple, wherever you're listening to it. And I'll see you in the next one. Trust your intuition, trust your inner wisdom, trust your inner guidance, close your eyes and listen. So trust your intuition, trust your inner wisdom, trust your inner guidance, close your eyes and listen.