← The Drop the Needle Podcast
The Drop the Needle Podcast
DTN Podcast | Jim Alstott Ep. 66 | The Illness That Changed Everything with Peter McLaughlin
01:26:42
Loading summary
Transcript225 lines
- [00:00]
A
Most people would rather remove a nest of irate hornets than search for auto and home insurance. That's why the zebra searches for you. Comparing over 100 insurance companies to find savings no one else can Compare. Today@thezebra.com I think I'll wait inside.
- [00:15]
B
Too fast, Trevor. Too fast.
- [00:17]
A
Here at the Zebra, research shows people would rather teach their kids to drive than search for auto and home insurance.
- [00:22]
C
I know what I'm doing, Mom.
- [00:24]
A
Or attend a corporate team building workshop. Go, team. Feel that synergy. Or be regaled by Uncle Frank's conspiracy theories.
- [00:32]
C
Listening to us right now.
- [00:34]
A
That's why the zebra searches for you. Comparing over 100 insurance companies to find savings no one else can compare. Today at the Zebra.com we do the searching, you do the saving.
- [00:50]
C
Welcome to the Drop the Needle Podcast, your backstage pass to the mystical realm. I'm your host, Jim Alstatt. And here, gifted souls step up to the mic, sharing their spiritual journey. We're hitting the high notes and the low notes of their awakening, creating a symphony of enlightenment. This isn't just another interview show. This is where divine insights are channeled and universal truths are revealed. So crank up your stereo and sit back, because who knows? This just might help you compose the next transformative chapter of your soul's purpose. Are you ready? Let's go. All right. This is the Drop the Needle Podcast, and I'm Jim Alstatt. My guest today went from looking for a cure and came back with a calling. In 2003, Peter McLaughlin was handed a leukemia diagnosis, and instead of just fighting it, he started asking what his mind and spirit had to do with healing. That question turned him into a certified hypnotherapist. The voice behind Blue sky hypnosis, with over 17 million views. 17 million views. Wow. And a guide who takes people into past lives, the space between lives and the trauma buried so deep, they've forgotten it's there. Peter McLaughlin. Welcome to the Drop the Needle podcast.
- [02:16]
B
Thank you so much, Jim. That was really. I actually loved that introduction. Who is this person? I want to meet him.
- [02:24]
C
I like that. That guy sounds interesting. What the hell? Oh, that's me. That's awesome. That's awesome. Hey, can you do us all a favor and can you maybe just take a moment and let people know a little bit about you or get to know you a little bit?
- [02:45]
B
Sure. I mean, that question is so broad, I can see, like, several entry points into it. And what I've learned. What I've learned is to follow what. What my inner voice is telling Me, what my heart's telling me, what's coming right to me. To answer that question, which isn't really so much a biographical question, but it's driven more by what we were talking about before we went live here. And that was this homework assignment you wanted me and your guest to do. And I said to you, I said, my God, I had no idea I was going to be stripped bare by this and start weeping as I'm going through these songs that I'd never realized there was a through line to it. So I feel called, based on this, to say who I am, who I am as a person waking up to God. That's who I am. I'm a person remembering who I really am. That's who I am. And that's why all this stuff happened, all this shit with the leukemia diagnosis and Lyme disease on the same day that. That, oh, my gosh, we're all trying to find our way back to God is my opinion and my experience. And what I'm saying is in my heart right now is that that's who I am. I got a lot of other things I could say about me that aren't quite as important, but right now it feels like it's important to say I'm a person who's finding his way back to God.
- [04:12]
C
That's very cool. I appreciate that. That's a great way to approach things, too, because I think I know, and I'll just go from my. My own point of view. Sometimes when something like that is asked, a question like that is asked, we just automatically go into the minutia and the. The little things and what you were. And not that they're unimportant, mind you, where you're born, raised, your background, things like that. But there are bigger things, and I think you just hit on them. So that was. That was very cool. I appreciate that. If you're okay with this, and you said nothing was off limits, which is fantastic, and I appreciate that, too. I want to go back to 2003, and you're handed a leukemia diagnosis, and I didn't know about the Lyme disease at the same time, which is just something. What did that moment actually feel like before any of this became your life's work?
- [05:24]
B
I went through the stages that Elisabeth Kubler Ross talks about when somebody dies. I immediately went into denial. That was the very first thing. This is not possible. This is complete bullshit. You have it wrong. I have to come in and get blood again. And I came in and get blood again. I got the same Results. And then I felt myself moving through other stages, like severe anger. It felt the unfairness of it all. I felt like a victim. It enraged me to see other people on the street. I didn't know them, but I just assumed that they weren't as healthy as me and they didn't have this, which I didn't know. And I was just angry. I was really pissed off. I was really, really angry. And then from there, I went into more of a, okay, I've got to roll my sleeves up. I've got to figure this out, because somebody else isn't going to do it for me. Because the doctors had said. When I asked, how long do you have to live? They said, maybe 10 years. And then they said, we don't know what causes this, and we don't know how to cure it. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to have to figure this out. And there was a. After the initial shock and after the anger and all of that stuff, and it took me a while to work through all of that. After all of that, there came to be more of a curiosity. There came to be more of a curiosity. And I had this inner feeling like, this isn't going to kill. This isn't going to do it. It's not going to be this. It was a deep feeling that this wasn't going to be the final chapter of my book. This wasn't going to be my swan song. I can't tell you exactly why I felt that, but I just felt that I just kind of knew that on the inside. And I think the reason that this was discovered is because I was taking a very extensive physical, because I had volunteered to be a firefighter in the town in which I lived, in Connecticut. And I went on to do that work. And that work also helped me, too, because it helped to put everything in context. I was dealing with people who were in the worst moments of their lives, really bad car accident might have been bad enough that we had to cut them out of the car. They were badly injured. There were fatalities that we would deal with. Structure fires, house fires. And there was something about all that that. That I think helped to distract me. It helped me to learn more about the human body because I became an EMT in addition to a firefighter, and we had to take pretty extensive training for that. It helped put everything into context, that nothing is guaranteed. And I saw that in my work. I think I felt a greater sense of purpose. That helped me feel less frightened about things. I think it gave me a feeling of Being capable. So all of these things were a big piece, I think, of navigating the first three or four years of this diagnosis.
- [08:33]
C
So a couple of things that you hit on. Well, number one, the firefighting. I know what is involved with that. Not firsthand, like, I went through it, but I have my oldest son and my middle son. I have three boys, but my oldest in my middle just graduated from firefightering academy and they're both doing the EMT work right now. So I. I do understand that you started to hit on a couple of different things. And what popped into my mind was, you know, you. Everybody goes from that grieving process right to. And you mentioned it, I was pissed off about this. So you go from fighting an illness to which you eventually have evolved into to wondering whether your mind and spirit had something to do with healing. Do you remember, or. I shouldn't even say that. Was there a single moment or a turn that took place that kind of flipped that switch for you? As far as mind, body, spirit, and
- [09:54]
B
healing, I would say there were a series of moments. One was, I had this idea that it was important. I still believe it, to fire on all cylinders. I believed that it was important, still do. To work at the level of the body, the level of the mind, the level of the emotions, the level of the spirit, especially. And I was seeing a psychotherapist. And I was in the midst, in the depths of this, feeling like a victim. And I said to her, I feel like there's a black cloud following me around. And her response to me was, one of those moments that I said that there were several. And what she said was, what if the black cloud is actually a mirror? And to me, this was like mic drop. Yeah, the needle drop. I really felt like it just stopped me in my tracks. And it was clearly a big piece of the. We are way more powerful than we realize, right? Our lives, the ancient wisdom, as above, so below, as within, so without, indicates that our lives, what we experience on the outside, the good, the bad and the ugly, is a reflection of what is already inside of us. And she was teaching me that lesson by changing the metaphor that I had created.
- [11:36]
C
Right.
- [11:37]
B
You know, that I was being singled out by this black cloud following me around to. No, you're just experiencing a reflection of what you're putting into the world. And she said it in such an artful way that I didn't think, what a bitch. Or resist her or something like that.
- [11:57]
C
How dare you.
- [11:59]
B
But I was able to accept it for the deep, underlying ancient wisdom that was embedded in that, that I fully subscribe to now.
- [12:11]
C
That's something. And. Well, did you happen to go back and tell her what that, what that did?
- [12:20]
B
I think I did because that wasn't the last time I worked with her, so I think I did. I'm not, I'm not 100% sure, but I, I'm. I think I did.
- [12:29]
C
That's a monumental framing of something that is when you're talking about some, Some big things in a. In a person's life, the, you know, why has this always happened to me? Why is this happening? The why me? To, you know, why is it happening as opposed to for me? What am I supposed to get from this?
- [12:55]
B
Yes. And what is my role in what is happening?
- [12:59]
C
Right, exactly.
- [13:00]
B
Am I a victim? And that means that my lot, my die is already cast. My happiness, my health, my life, everything is dependent upon someone else changing. And if they don't change, then I'm just screwed. Is it that, or am I a creator? Do I create? Or do I at least co. Create my reality? Different levels we identify almost totally with our conscious mind, which represents 5% of our brain's processing power. What's going on in the other 95%?
- [13:35]
C
That's exactly right.
- [13:37]
B
How are my old traumas implicated in what I'm experiencing right now in a situation that. Terrified of, or that I, that I don't want to happen or that I'm angry about? Even like relationships, you know, people, it's. It's fashionable these days for people to say, particularly women to say about a bad relationship, oh, he was a malignant narcissist. Okay, maybe he, maybe he was. Maybe he was a malignant narcissist. But at a minimum, of all the fish in the sea, you chose him. You said yes to him. I don't think it was an arranged marriage. And so this is not to blame at all. It's actually to take the power that we have that we don't realize, we've forgotten that our present is entirely governed by, arguably by our past. It's the prism through which we engage with the present moment. And my feeling is, if you want to change your present, if you want to change your future, you have to change your past. And when I say that, I don't mean you have to get. Climb into some kind of a time machine and change the events as they occurred in the past, but rather you need to change your relationship to the past. In other words, what does it mean in the past?
- [15:06]
C
Yes. Yes.
- [15:07]
B
Right.
- [15:08]
C
Yeah.
- [15:09]
B
So that reframe from Something's happening to me. This black cloud is following me around and I'm a victim of it to. It's a reflection of what's going on inside of me. Who has control over what's going on inside of me? I do.
- [15:24]
C
Right. Yep.
- [15:25]
B
Is it easy to change all that? No. But I have that power. So I have moved out of the victim into something else. And to me, I'd way rather be in the place where if I created this right, I could uncreate it or create something different. That's a much better, happier place for me to be.
- [15:45]
C
Well, you're the author then, and you can control some of those things. You know, there are. There are always going to be things that are out of your control and. But again, it's how you're going to show up to that.
- [15:58]
B
And can I say one other thing about that?
- [16:00]
C
Please, Please.
- [16:02]
B
That's true at a certain level, but in the same way that I talked about a hypothetical woman who's complaining about her ex husband who was a malignant narcissist and maybe he was that out of all the fish in the seas, she chose him. It didn't happen to her in that sense. And that it was governed more by the traumas that she suffered early in her life where he seemed like home to her, attracts me. So I was in meditation with my spirit guides, which I do every day, and I was complaining about the state of the world. And I think I said something to them like, why is this place such a shithole? I was particularly colorful that day. And they immediately said the immediate answer was twofold. You chose to come here. Number two, when you want to be entertained, you pay money. You stand in line for stories that involve what, conflict. So don't come telling us that this blah, blah, blah. And you don't have a hand in this. So even when things are not going a certain way and you don't have direct human control over them, it is my belief that we all chose to be here. So on that level, yes.
- [17:25]
C
Right, I agree.
- [17:27]
B
And the thing about that, again, is not to blame, but really to open a different door. A door that is ultimately more empowering.
- [17:39]
C
Yes.
- [17:40]
B
In other words, if I really did, and I believe I did, chose to come here at this time, I knew what I was getting into. It's like me going camping and complaining about the mosquitoes.
- [17:52]
C
Right.
- [17:53]
B
In certain parts of this country, certain times of the year, that is just a reality. It's me complaining that. That I have to use a. I don't know, a hole Cut in the, in the, in the earth in order to go to the bathroom instead of having a nice, you know, clean toilet or something, I decided to go camping. Why would I complain?
- [18:13]
C
Yes. No, that's. That's a great way to look at it. And I. So I want to talk more about that from the universal decision making or your choice. You choose.
- [18:33]
A
Most people would rather assemble a 300 piece cabinet than search for insurance. That's why the zebra searches for you. Comparing over 100 insurance companies to find savings no one else can Compare.
- [18:43]
C
Today@thezebra.com OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, Ondeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star trust pilot reviews, Ondeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes@ondeck.com depending on certain loan attributes. Your business loan may be issued by Ondeck or Celtic on Deck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. Using those things and you, you're absolutely right. With regard to narcissists, I was just talking to someone the other day that, that seems to be the label du jour, you know, oh, they're a narcissist. They're a narcissist. They're. And then we've gone so far as to have subcategories of narcissism, which is really, I find it interesting whenever I go, oh, okay, I didn't know that. I didn't know that that was a thing. I know people like that. And so I see a therapist and I was talking with her about it and about narcissists. And I said, I happen to know some narcissists and they're very close to me. And I said when I started looking at these things that they used to define the narcissist, I was like, but I do that sometimes. I do. Am I a narcissist? And I asked her that and she goes, she started laughing and she just said, well, the fact that you asked that if you were a narcissist means there's a high percentage you're not. However, she said, there's healthy doses of that that come into play when you talk about self, right? And you talked about your spirit guides and we talk about higher self. And we define narcissists sometimes as being selfish. Right? You're selfish. You're selfish. You're selfish. That's just One of many things, but sometimes for self care and your higher self is telling you you need to do certain things in order to protect yourself, to re energize, to refocus, revitalize. And there's nothing wrong with that, I guess, is that I went full circle on my, my rabbit hole loop. I actually circled the rabbit hole a couple of times there. But I first and fore. I'm going to stop for just a second. I'm going to say this. I absolutely love these conversations. I could do this all day long because you bring up something, I think about it and then I immediately go, well, what about this? Well, what about this? Well, what about this? And I love it. So thank you. I absolutely, I appreciate that. One of the things, let's talk a little bit about maybe your recovery in leukemia, right? Because there's going to be a fair amount of skepticism or skeptics out there that are listening in our audience right now that won't believe this, but you credit the power of the mind in your own recovery. Is that, is that true? Feeling wiped out after a normal day in public. Always called too sensitive. Take a breath. The sensitivity isn't a flaw. It might just be intuition you were never taught to manage. At the listening field retreat, August 21st to the 23rd at Eaglewood Resort and Spa in Itasca, Gail Alexander shows you how to protect your energy. And Kerry Muller's sound work helps your nervous system finally settle into safety. Space is limited. Click the link below or visit thechillcrew.org TheListeningRetreat Is that what I would say?
- [22:58]
B
It's one of the main reasons, but I mentioned before firing on all cylinders.
- [23:05]
C
That's true, that's true.
- [23:06]
B
I worked with a naturopath, found out that I had heavy metal poisoning through working with her and went through various types of detoxification from the heavy metals. And I did a ton of work around detoxifying in air quotes, the emotional toxins from my own past. Because the body and the mind are connected. And whatever any of us says, there does remain the fact that when I was diagnosed with this in 2003 and I was told that maybe I would live for 10 years, and here I am 23 years later. So there's something in that.
- [23:50]
C
Well, yes, exactly. Right, exactly.
- [23:54]
B
I also think that everybody's healing journey is different. Where allopathy wants to basically come up with one pill that everybody takes, one dosage, one size fits all, everybody does it. That one surgery, one process that everyone does. And I just don't I think that disease and illness actually serves a higher purpose and that it's created for a variety of reasons. And that's one of the reasons why it's so different for different people. It also is true that the placebo effect is a real thing, even if the authorities attempt to dismiss it by using the phrase it's only the placebo effect, which is up to 33% of the effectiveness of any medication. Up to 33% of any medication's effectiveness is due to the placebo effect. In other words, in a clinical trial, they can get the same positive results out of people that they give an inert sugar pill to.
- [24:57]
C
That's bananas.
- [24:59]
B
That sham knee surgery is just as effective as real knee surgery. This is where they put oxygen anesthesia, they make an incision, and those people, in the main have just as effective results as the people who have the real thing. So it's already well documented in Western allopathic scientific literature that the mind and the body are connected. We just have only scratched the surface of that.
- [25:33]
C
Right.
- [25:34]
B
And we also know of people who have. We have this phrase for it. It's almost like, I don't know, a bunch of people were dancing around a fire one night with headdresses on and they came up with this phrase, which is called spontaneous remission. What does that really mean? It just means we don't know. They were sick yesterday and today they're not, and we don't know why. We have a. But we have a phrase for it called spontaneous remission. Shouldn't we be investing more of our time and energy and effort and money into understanding what that really means? Well, no, because you can't make any money by people spontaneously having remission.
- [26:12]
C
True. That is true. You know, you had. You had said something about finding the reason in illness or for having a particular illness. Did you find your reason in this?
- [26:27]
B
Yeah, I've known it for a long time, which was, I was not on the path that my soul came here to be on.
- [26:36]
C
Say more about that. You knew it for a long time. Why don't you explain to everyone what you mean by that?
- [26:43]
B
When I was diagnosed, this was in the wake of 9 11, and I was working four days a week on Wall Street. I was on my way to the office when the second plane hit. The planes purportedly followed the Hudson river north to south to navigate to the Trade center buildings 1 and 2, which would have made them pass inside of a mile from my house and where my wife and three little kids at the time were living. And on the fifth day of that. Of the work week, I was trying to grow a security guard business. And then on the weekends, I was trying to fix up our house, which was at the time, 100-year-old Queen Anne Victorian. And when I wasn't doing any of those things, I was helping take care of our kids. It was like I was like a lot of people. I was just. I was. I might as well have been a robot.
- [27:39]
A
Yeah.
- [27:40]
B
You know, putting one foot in front of the other, trying to make money, trying to put out metaphorical fires.
- [27:47]
C
Sure.
- [27:48]
B
And my back was going out. I didn't know why. I thought it was because I was getting older. I wasn't experiencing much joy. I wasn't doing anything with friends. I was just working all the time. And the work. I remember in the immediate wake of 9 11, I remembered thinking, oh, my God, what would that be like, to die at a job you hate?
- [28:16]
C
Ugh. Right.
- [28:20]
B
I worked in the South Tower for a while. I had a job. And I want to say I was on, like, the 16th floor or something. I mean, that thing went up to, like, 90 something floors.
- [28:30]
C
Okay.
- [28:30]
B
And. And I remember in the summer one year, there was a power outage in Lower Manhattan, and the elevators didn't work and we had to evacuate through the stairs. And I remember what kind of hell that was. It was really hot in there, and there were hordes of people, and you can only move at the speed of the people who are going the slowest. And I was only going 16 flights down. I wasn't going 60 or 80 or 90 flights down. But that concept of dying at a job, you know, you're going to die at a job that you hate really rocked me right after that. And so I think, again, I think my soul came here to do something different. And I think I was going down the wrong path in every way. And I think that this was a gift. I wouldn't want to give anyone else this particular gift. And it took me years to realize that it was a gift. But ultimately, it was. Why? Because it invited me, in very strident terms, to change my life, to clear out the emotional toxins and traumas of my own past, to look more clearly at how I was living, to heal the anger that I had inside of me. Because the anger wasn't just created when I was diagnosed, it was already there. And all of this and the way I responded to it, I would say, helped me to be a better father and a better husband and a better human being. Then I would have been a better friend. Than I would have been had this not happened.
- [30:23]
C
You know, there's so much to unpack in, in what you, you were just saying the, that anger and in being frustrated. I think that's really what it is because you're, you're frustrated because you just know that there's, there's something missing. And you may not be able to put your finger on it, but you know, there is something that is out of alignment or just missing in your life. And you said that you went on, you were on a journey or on the path to remedy or alter some of those things. And I said, instead of change, I just said that. But I guess change, cure whatever you want to rid yourself of those things. What were some of the things that you. I know you mentioned the detox from the heavy metals and some of the, what were some of the other things that you did?
- [31:24]
B
Well, the thing that comes to mind right away would be the emotional toxins.
- [31:28]
C
Okay.
- [31:29]
B
The old pain that I was carrying around that I wasn't even aware of.
- [31:33]
C
So that past life then, or was that before you knew?
- [31:39]
B
There was a real intense period for me. So I was diagnosed in 2003, 2006. Three years later is when I went to Santa Fe, New Mexico to be trained as a hypnotherapist. And it was a very intensive immersive experience. It was like two and a half months of living there and it was really 24, 7.
- [32:05]
C
Really?
- [32:06]
B
Work? Yeah, yeah, it was Monday through Friday at the school from like 9 to 6 o' clock or something. Monday through Friday, Yep. And then on weekends, the students there were 40 of us. We worked with each other and we also went into the school to meet with the instructor that we had chosen to be our hypnotherapist and to do these really in depth sessions from the client side. So I'd be sitting in a chair for two, two and a half hours at a pop, cleaning out stuff from my own past. Then we would also get together with each other. The students would get together with each other during the week, do more stuff. Yeah. You were surrounded by people who were just as fired up as you were, just as open as you were about this exploration. So the stuff that I can recall clearing up immediately, it had more to do with. In this one case, my wife and I had a very dear friend who also had young children. And we were really good friends with her and her husband. We were all friends before any of us had kids. And she was diagnosed with a pretty severe kind of cancer. And the doctors really bullied her into doing radiation chemotherapy, which she didn't want to do. She didn't want to do it, but they said, if you do it, we guarantee you five years. If you don't do it, you're going to die. And she did it. And the cancer came right back. And then they said, well, we lied to you. They just admitted it. They said, we lied to you because we knew if we didn't lie to you, you wouldn't do it. And we knew this was your only chance. And so she went and did this. She went to a Christian kind of ministry healing place in Colorado and got on this very strict diet and she was passing parasites. And she came back from that and she was completely cancer free. And the doctors looked at her like she was a ghost because they expected her to be dead. And then within, I think another year, she started getting really sick again. And when she went in to find out why she was getting sick this time, they said, oh, you have radiation proctitis. So the radiation that we lied to you about is eating away your body and there's nothing that can be done. And then that caused her death. She died as a result of that.
- [34:32]
C
Oh my goodness.
- [34:33]
B
And I was holding on to so much grief and so much anger about this, I didn't even realize the depths of the hatred and anger and grief that I was holding onto regarding this. And that was something that came out in one of these sessions when I was deep in hypnosis and I was sitting in a chair and I was raging and I was sobbing. And ultimately the therapist guided me through to forgiving the doctors for what they had done. And there were multiple sessions like that regarding a variety of things from my own past. And that felt enormously cathartic, I guess is one of the words I would use. And the other word I would use is healing, because again, the mind and body are connected.
- [35:26]
C
Yes, yes. And thank you for sharing that, by the way. I really do appreciate your vulnerability as well as transparency in this. I'll tell you something along the cancer lines from my life. My ex wife was diagnosed with cancer in when she was pregnant. She was diagnosed with stage four. Even though they couldn't do the full body scan because she was pregnant. They called it stage four because of the lymphatic involvement. And to your point, we saw doctor after doctor after doctor that said terminate the pregnancy. And we're going to start a very aggressive regime of chemotherapy and then we'll hit it with radiation and then we're going to do chemotherapy again. And you Might make it so with that too. Whenever somebody gets a woman, and I assume it's the same for a male, there's a high probability of sterilization. You're not going to be able to have a child. So, you know, adoption's always an option. And which would have been fine, but there was something in here, whether it be my mind, soul, higher self, whatever, that just kept saying, no, I don't think so. And we saw four doctors that said, all said the same thing. And I remember her mother saying, well, you know, these are the best people. And so you're gonna, this is what we should do. And I just said, I don't think so. And a friend that I used to work with, he was my mentor in recruiting. His mother had this doctor and she said, he said, well, she loved him, you know, you may as well go see him because he chair at Memorial Sloan Kettering, yada, yada, yada. So we did. And I just said, you've seen all the, the tests, all the, everything you've got all the paperwork. I'm going to cut to the chase. Can, you know, are you going to say the same thing everybody else is? Terminate the pregnancy can or are we able to do this? He said, no, I think we can do this. I think we can do this. I said, you think we can? He goes, no, we're going to do this. And that's my oldest boy who just graduated from firefighting academy.
- [38:11]
B
Oh, that's an awesome story.
- [38:13]
C
Yeah.
- [38:14]
B
What a blessing it was.
- [38:16]
C
And that was something that there's a whole story behind it. And actually it's in my book behind me about that there was a dream, a prophetic dream, and yeah, just made that decision not to do it. And I don't. I'm going to tell you right now, Peter, I can't tell you why to this day. I didn't go, oh, you're the, you're the expert. I'm going to go with you. I can't tell you today why, but we didn't do it. And that's, you know, I had mentioned higher self and you had mentioned your spirit guides and things, which is always intriguing to me, by the way. I love that conversation. But maybe, maybe we'll get to, to that some more in a little bit. But there's something I wanted to ask you as it relates to. Your. Yes, I mentioned the past life regression. I wanted, I wanted to talk about that because in your media kit, you talk about past life regression and you talk about spiritual regression. Can, can we talk a Little bit about that, because I know past life regression, life between lives. Yeah. This is where you lose some people, you know what I mean? Because they're like, okay, what. What is that about? I have become someone who is very much a believer in that. But it took a while. I don't know how it was for you, but it took a little while for me. But again, there's going to be a number of skeptics out there, and there's going to be others that are going, yeah, let's look more. Let's talk about this more. Can we talk about that for a little bit? Are you okay with that?
- [40:16]
B
Sure. Yeah, of course. The first thing I guess that I would. I would like to address is when you talk about skepticism, and I will say that I think God gave us a skeptical mind for a reason. I don't think that being skeptical is somehow wrong or bad, but anything taken to the extreme, I think is going to lead us astray, let's say. And to really cut to the chase, if we determine that the root cause of your fear of speaking in public or your migraine headaches is something that happened to you in a past lifetime, and we're able to resolve, neutralize, or heal that initial incident that set this dynamic up, and your headaches go away, and now you can speak in public, what do you care?
- [41:08]
C
Exactly.
- [41:11]
B
At that point, it's really none of my business what you decide to believe. I don't have stock. My stock doesn't go up if you believe in past lifetimes. My role in working with my clients is to help them reach their goal. If they reach their goal, we're good. If you want to just say, well, that was just a metaphor my mind made up. Okay, it's fine. It's not what I believe. But if that's what you decide you want to believe, that's perfectly fine. But if you can have an open enough mind to have the experience before you make up your mind about what it means, I think that's wise. I remember reading something about when I was a kid, I remember reading someone, and this must go back to the 1920s or 30s, where this sports writer was doubting that there was such a thing as a curveball. He was trying to say it was an optical illusion. And so this pitcher said, okay, that may be true. Why don't we put a door, set up a door out here on this baseball field sideways, and you get behind it, and I'll bounce these curve balls off the top of your head all day long. Yeah, I don't think so.
- [42:32]
C
Right, right. That's funny.
- [42:37]
B
For anybody out there, they may say past lives aren't real. That's totally fine. It seems like a good idea to actually have the experience of going into a past lifetime before you make your final judgment. And then if you just decide it's not real, but you get to your end result, you get to your goal, to me, that's a win.
- [42:56]
C
I'm with you 100% on that. And you know what's funny is there's sometimes. So I've got some. Some friends that. We're college friends, and they. Oh, that's. Oh, that's. It can always be explained. And so I have one of my friends. Years ago, my mom thought that it was a great idea for me to go see a psychic, somebody that she had seen. And I said, you know what? Okay. It was the very first time I'd seen a psychic, but I didn't want to go by myself, so I brought one of my buddies and said, hey, you come, too. So I got his session. You know, I took care of his session. And he left the session white as a ghost. I mean, like, sheet white. And he was like, oh, she. Lucky guess. And I was like, what? It went from, oh, my God, I can't believe how accurate she was. That was amazing. She was talking about this, too. It was just a lucky guess. On the car ride home, it became a lucky guess. And this was before the Internet was even a real thing, you know, 1992, you know, was the Internet around? Yeah, I think.
- [44:19]
B
But I wasn't on it in 92. I wasn't that on until 95.
- [44:23]
C
So.
- [44:24]
B
Probably existed in the technological fringes maybe.
- [44:27]
C
Right. You know, maybe with NASA or something like that or, you know, other forms of governmental agencies or things. But for us, it wasn't a thing. And it was just like, you really think she's gonna. She did it right when you were. You were right in front of her. And it went from being. Like I said, went from how did she know that that was amazing? To she was lucky by the time we got home. So I understand what you're saying about the skepticism, and that's where I. I think I've kind of taken that approach along the way. That's like, I don't care if it works. I don't care with, like, Reiki or Chios or what. Whatever it is. Did it help you? Well, yeah. Mission accomplished. Right? I mean.
- [45:19]
B
Yeah.
- [45:19]
C
My job's done.
- [45:20]
B
Yeah.
- [45:22]
C
At that point, what I. If you don't mind, I Want to go one step further, if that's okay. Can you maybe take somebody, walk us through, like a session, what it would look, and I'm not talking about do it necessarily, but like frame it out for us so. So people can maybe.
- [45:41]
B
And you're talking about a past life regression session or are you talking about just a session?
- [45:46]
C
Well, so are they. Let me ask you, are they different?
- [45:51]
B
Well, regression in and of itself is not. There's not a giant distinction between regressing somebody to a scene from earlier in their present life or to a scene in the life between lives or to a past lifetime scene. It's all kind of the same.
- [46:08]
C
Okay, Right.
- [46:10]
B
So right now if I ask you about the room you grew up in, like if you were to close your eyes and imagine the room you grew up in, you could picture the whole thing. You could remember the whole thing. And if we really started talking about it a lot, you would start to. Part of. You would start to feel like you were actually there.
- [46:30]
C
Yes.
- [46:31]
B
It's really the same with a past life because again, your conscious mind represents 5%. 5, 5% of your brain's processing power. 95% is your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind never turns off the way your conscious mind does when you go to sleep at night. Where your conscious mind can process an estimated 16 bits of data per second, your unconscious subconscious mind can process a million bits of data per second. And now there are tens of thousands of documented testimonies of people who were in a medical setting, hooked up to machines, who died and then were revived, brought back to life. In other words, they were having their brain waves monitored and they were having their heart monitored. And for a period of time, they had no heartbeat and they had no brainwaves. Clinically dead. And about 40% of those people are able to recount a period of consciousness while they were dead. This is the going through a tunnel with light at the end, for example, meeting beings of light on the other side, maybe relatives that pre deceased them, maybe meeting religious figures, maybe meeting other figures that they don't even know who they are being communicated with. So how is it even possible in this day and age to deny that the consciousness survives the physical death? You know, there's two philosophical schools of thought. There are people who say, well, we're just meat suits, right? You know, and we're just, we're just basically biological robots. And when you die, you die, and that's it, there's nothing else. And then there's other people who say, no, we're spiritual beings. Having a physical experience.
- [48:30]
C
Right.
- [48:34]
B
So it's not a giant leap if you accept what these people are saying, which is tens of thousands of people from all walks of life, including neurosurgeons and doctors and people that our society would admire and maybe give them more credence than they might give to a person who works on an assembly line. Whatever. It's not a big leap to say if your consciousness survives your physical death, then why wouldn't reincarnation be a thing? And then you would have to ask yourself, how do I explain these cases where you have say a three year old boy who starts talking to his parents about being a fighter pilot in World War II in the Pacific theater Flying an F4U Corsair airplane off the deck of an aircraft carrier. But it's a baby flattop. It's not the one that all historians would know. Never mind a three year old knowing it would be able to give the name of his wingman and best friend would be able to give the name of his sister who PS when he gave the name of his sister, she was still alive. The parents looked her up and when she met this kid, she was so convinced that this was the reincarnation of her dead brother, she gave all of his personal effects to him, to the little boy.
- [49:48]
A
Wow.
- [49:48]
B
Uh huh, yeah. Technical details about the plane. How does this three year old know this? How does he know that his plane was hit by an anti aircraft artillery shell in the cowling? How does he know that? And how is that then confirmed by the guy he knew was his wingman who was still alive at the time and said, yeah, my buddy was shot down and killed when his plane, I was flying right next to him, got hit in a cowling by anti aircraft fire. How would this three year old know this? Give me a break. It's so ridiculous when you look into it, it's almost not even worth getting into any kind of a debate about it.
- [50:30]
C
Right.
- [50:30]
B
It's either you accept it or you don't. And my feeling is if you don't accept it now, you probably will in the future. And either way it doesn't even matter with respect to why you're here and why we're working together. You're just trying to get from A to B. I can help you get from A to B. You believe whatever you want.
- [50:46]
C
Yeah. You know, and I think there was a point in time when, especially early when I started to really think or believe that what I was reading about, what I was experiencing wasn't something that was coincidence. Or could be easily explained type of things. I would try to, you know, plead my case or defend my position. And the thing I realized quickly that it's not worth doing. It's just. That's energy and time wasted.
- [51:33]
B
Yeah.
- [51:34]
C
Okay, well, I'm not here to convince you. Believe it or don't believe it. That's great. Let's move on. So that's, I love these. That was a great story and a great example of that. That's, that's something of the three year old. So you've done a lot of these, the past life regression sessions, right?
- [51:53]
B
A lot. And I, you mentioned my YouTube channel, right. That has 130,000 subscribers and now 18 million views. And one of the, one of the, one of the tracks on there. Well, I have several tracks that are guided past life regression tracks. And the thing about YouTube is you've got an audience, literally of millions and millions of people. And so there's one of the tracks, it's a past life regression for beginners. And I think it has like 940,000 views at this point. And when you get that number of views, you get hundreds, if not thousands of comments.
- [52:28]
C
Sure.
- [52:28]
B
And the comments are everything good, bad, ugly. Right. I didn't see anything. All black, but so many people.
- [52:35]
C
Yeah.
- [52:36]
B
Just reporting constantly. I was a Baker in 1716 in this, this little town in France named Blah Blah Blah. And they, they said, and I looked it up later and there is a town called Blah Blah Blah. I didn't know anything about France that, you know, these stories happen over and over and over and over and over again. And the most, the most important part about these regressions is when people are able to say, which is always, this is how it mirrors what I'm going through in my present life. And it perfectly explains why I would be struggling with this.
- [53:13]
C
That's something. And I gotta tell you, that was. I was gonna ask you if there was a common thread that came from that, and you just answered that. So that's amazing. You know, I gotta tell you, I actually had the opportunity to have. I've only had one past life regression. And it was significant, mind you, because one of them, one of my lives, was a disciple of Jesus. And I've got to say, I'll be the first one to admit, even though I went to DePaul University, which is Catholic college, it wasn't necessarily about Catholicism. They did want to expose you to different religions and cultures and things like that in the religious studies. But I'm not a theologian. I'm not A biblical scholar. I'm none of those things. I don't even attend a church any longer. So I had to Google things. And what I found interesting was when it was recorded, because it was a zoom, it was a virtual deal. What I found interesting was the detail that I was able to give. And I had no idea, I had no idea what some of these things were. And I went and googled. I woke up at like 2:00 in the morning, ran downstairs and googled who or what is shaman in ancient Aramaic language? First of all, I didn't know it was ancient Aramaic, but I typed that out into Google and it was Simon Peter, who is the rock? And one of the things that in the past life regression was, where are your feet? Look down. What are you wearing? You have shoes on. I said, well, yeah, sort of. It's like sandal ish, but it looks almost bare feet. Where are you standing on a rock? What are you doing speaking to a crowd of people? And it was just like I had no. And I swear to you, I swear to God, no idea about that. And then it was just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And talk about again what's going on in your life currently speaking. Presenting different ideas, maybe anti or counterculture type of thinking. What they were doing then was counterculture. Oh yeah, this is counterculture. However, just like then, I think this, it's going to be part of the regular culture in our regular lives. This is going to become more and more normal. What we're talking about right here, right now is going to be more normal.
- [56:33]
B
Sure. I love the three stages of a new idea. Have you heard this one? The three stages that a new idea goes through, how it's received by the population. So the first stage is ridicule. The second stage is vehement opposition. And the third stage is accept as conventional wisdom.
- [57:02]
C
Isn't that something? So where are we now with this?
- [57:07]
B
With past life regression or with something else?
- [57:10]
C
I think spirituality. Let's be very specific about past life regression. Where are we now with that? Are we still in that vehement disagreement?
- [57:22]
B
I think I'm going to be so biased in this because of the crowd I run with.
- [57:29]
C
Well, I guess that's true. I should have thought of that before I asked you that. Sorry.
- [57:36]
B
That's okay. It feels to me more like closer to accepting as conventional wisdom than it did when I began this 20 years ago. You know, it feels like people are way more open now. Way more open.
- [57:58]
C
There you go. You froze there for a second, Peter.
- [58:01]
B
Sorry, sorry. I was just saying people are way more open now than they were 20 years ago when I started this.
- [58:07]
C
Well, I'm, I'm excited to see where this goes. I really am excited because I, I'm, I guess I'm intrigued by this day to day, and not only about myself. You know, obviously there's a natural curiosity. You want to find out more and find out more because of what you said, it starts to, to fill in some blanks for you now as to why, why do I react this way? Why am I dealing with this? Why, you know, whatever it is, whatever the situation is, it, I really do feel that it's, it's helpful. I, I, so I'm going to ask you, Can I ask you one more question? Then we, we get to the musical questions. Are you okay?
- [58:55]
B
Yeah, yeah, please.
- [58:56]
A
Yeah.
- [58:56]
C
Okay. And I, I don't know if people ask you this a lot or not, but your work assumes consciousness exists before the body, and it survives it independent of the body. Past lives, space between lives. So what is consciousness in your view? And could something built like in Silicon Valley ever have it? Like, could a machine have it, ever have a soul injected into it?
- [59:34]
B
I don't think so. I don't think so. I think ultimately technology is, it's called Ahrimonic. Rudolf Steiner was a mystic from the early part of the 20th century. He's the one who created biodynamic farming and Waldorf schools and so on. And he was the one that said that science, he's 100 years before it actually happened. He said science is going to come up with a vaccine, and the purpose of this vaccine will be to cut humanity off from their divinity. And he talked about how Jesus was basically viewed by the powers that existed at his time as a virus, that they wanted to create a vaccine to stop that kind of virus. And he talked about how this planet is ruled by Lucifer and by Ahriman, A H R I M A N. And Ahriman is essentially the God of technology. And technology has its utility, but it is soulless. And even as we're talking now, I think about how Satanists, when they do things like a black mass or they wear a crucifix upside down in order to ridicule God and ridicule Christians, they're following. They're not creating their own thing. They're just taking something that already exists and essentially flipping it upside down, inverting it.
- [61:17]
C
Okay?
- [61:19]
B
And to me, that's what technology is. It's not creating anything new in terms of philosophy and music and Ideas that has a soul and a heart to is replicating things. So large language models are taking what humans have and it's creating something out of our energy. But I don't think you can create a human out of a machine. I think you can mimic humanity, but I don't think you can create humans because that, in my opinion, that is truly a power of God. Creating us in his image is an act of God, not of man. And I think.
- [62:11]
C
Right.
- [62:12]
B
Humans are. The fall occurred because of our ego and our pride that we could do it better. And I think that these efforts to be godlike using technology is driven by ultimately by ego and by pride.
- [62:33]
C
I agree with that. I think pride go before the fall. So there.
- [62:40]
B
There's also the worst of the cardinal sins.
- [62:43]
C
Right.
- [62:44]
B
Which really is important to me. I think about this a lot now and. Go ahead, go ahead.
- [62:50]
C
You know, but no, that's where I was. Was going and I apologize. There was, you know, was it life imitates art? The reason I asked you that question specifically, obviously because of AI and what's going on and it's just quickly evolving and evolving. But there are so many movies out there that, you know, when somebody. There's this. That takes on the person, the. A deceased person's life and characteristics and everything else. And there's just. They're that close to showing that whatever creature, machine of having a soul. I mean, it's like that close. And I was just wondering, you know, and especially because you've, you know, in the film industry and every. Everything that you do right now. I was just curious to get your. Your take on that. And I don't know if that makes sense. What.
- [63:56]
B
Yeah, that's my take. That's my take. And if you listen to some of the thinkers on the technology side and what I would consider to be a very dark side, like the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab and one of his acolytes, I forget his name right now, but he writes a lot about technology and so on. And his view is that as we stated before, he believes that humans are no more than me. Biological robots.
- [64:29]
C
Ah, okay.
- [64:30]
B
Hackable, hackable biological robots without a soul that they die and that's the end of it. If that's your belief, if that's your belief about what a human is, then of course that can be replicated. But if your belief about humanity is that we are created in the image of God, that we are essentially these, these divine spiritual beings having a temporary experience in a body that can't be created by a human being in a lab who's trying to be God.
- [65:01]
C
Right. Imitating so you've heard of the God particle theory, right? That we're all part of God and
- [65:12]
B
they're like different cells in the same body.
- [65:16]
C
Yes. So unity consciousness. But above and beyond that, there's also that physical peace and that. That. That we are all a part of God and therefore that it extrapolates out to. And therefore we are God. How do you feel about that when somebody says that, well, I'm God, I can create my own. And it's with authority that they say that. How do you feel about that? Feeling wiped out after a normal day in public. Always called too sensitive. Take a breath. The sensitivity isn't a flaw. It might just be intuition you were never taught to manage. At the listening field retreat, August 21st to the 23rd at Eaglewood Resort and Spa in Itasca, Gail Alexander shows you how to protect your energy. And Kerry Muller's sound work helps your nervous system finally settle into safety. Space is limited. Click the link below or visit thechillcrew.org
- [66:13]
B
thelisteningretreat it sounds like a semantic thing for me. So is it possible because we don't know what God is. I don't know that as humans, we can really, truly know exactly what God is. And is it possible that we are. Well, we're manifestations of God. Is it possible that all of us together, living and dead, if you put all of us together in one big clump, that we would be God? I suppose that is possible. That concept doesn't strike me as something that is impossible because I do think that we are manifestations of God. I do think that we are representations of God in a sense. So if somebody said that I am God, are they saying, me personally as an individual is God and the only God? I would think that's probably not true. But if they were saying, I am a different cell in the same body and we're calling that body God, then I would think, yeah, we all are in that sense.
- [67:30]
C
Right? Right. So I lean more that way. And the only reason I ask that is because I've heard that come up in conversations in different circles a lot lately. And they refer to themselves as I am God. I'm going to play God. And I'm like going, I'm gonna step back for a second. You know, I. I think there's hubris in that. That is, that it makes me uncomfortable is why. And that's why I was asking that kind.
- [68:04]
B
That kind of way of Interpreting it would make me uncomfortable too. And even the language, I think, reveals something, which is I'm going to play God. So that's like saying, I'm going to play Julius Caesar.
- [68:14]
C
Pretend. Yes.
- [68:15]
B
I'm not Julius Caesar. I'm playing Julius Caesar.
- [68:19]
C
Right, right.
- [68:21]
B
I'm wearing the robes, and I'm taking on, to the extent that I can as an actor, this Persona, but I also have an awareness that I'm not Julius Caesar.
- [68:31]
C
Yeah, correct. Okay, cool. You know, and. And on a side note, before we go into the. The next. The musical questions, I would love to have an opportunity to get a couple of other people and do like a forum and we have kind of like they have on. On TV with the. The sports writers where they give them a little bit of time to talk about each topic. I would love to do that and have you be a part of it. I've. I've. I've reached out to a couple of people so far, and I think your. Your depth and breadth of knowledge is. Is very interesting to me. And I'm not blowing smoke up behind Den. I'm being. I'm being serious because I think it would be really interesting to talk about some of these topics that we're just touching on and really drill down a little bit on that. So if you're open to that.
- [69:33]
B
Yeah, yeah, I'd definitely be open to that.
- [69:35]
C
I may edit this out of the. Because I'm. Because I'm being very serious. I think that there's some. There's some real, I think, important topics right now out in the world that need to be discussed by people. People much smarter than me and go about this. So it. One of the other things, and we can ask it. I'll ask it maybe another time is if you've ever had a regression, past life regression, and many times. And each time do you get a little something extra?
- [70:09]
B
Sometimes something. Sometimes something huge.
- [70:12]
C
We'll have to talk about that. I. I'd like to do it again, and that might be something that I set up a session with you to do again because I know there's a lot more in there that I need to find out. But in the meantime, we're going to transition and we're going to segue into the musical questions. It's just about that time, as I mentioned to you, even before we started doing this. I do truly believe that music is the tie that binds us all together. There's something about it. And everyone has a soundtrack that accompanies their life. If they just take a moment to think about it. So if you're ready, we can get that started. So what was the first song that you can remember that you fell in love with from the radio or one that you were just like, oh, I can't wait to hear that again.
- [71:07]
B
So I, I looked it up today. I haven't heard it in decades, but I remember it very clearly. It was called Little Willie.
- [71:14]
C
Oh, yes.
- [71:15]
B
The name of the band was. Exactly. The name of the band was sweet. And I loved this song. It came out in 1973. So when it came out, I was 11. And what I can tell you, because it ties back to being a hypnotist, is that I was convinced as an 11 year old and maybe 12, that's when it was playing on the radio, that if that when that song came on, I couldn't lose at anything I was playing.
- [71:43]
C
Yeah, that's awesome.
- [71:44]
B
That it was impossible for me to lose at anything I was doing. So if I was playing ping pong, if I was shooting pool, if I was playing that little hockey game, you know, where you slide the levers back and forth, Any game that I would be playing in that moment, even if I was down by three goals or something, I would come back and win. Before the song was over, I convinced myself that that was true. And it was true over and over and over and over again. And I was showing myself the power of the mind when I was 11, but I didn't even realize it. And it was tied to that song.
- [72:15]
A
Wow.
- [72:16]
B
And it wasn't anything specific about the song. I don't think I just had held on to that belief that that was true and it, and it was true for me over and over again.
- [72:28]
C
Isn't that something that we've been able to do these things all along unbeknownst to ourselves? Seriously, later in life you go, oh, I guess I was manifesting whatever then and didn't even know it exactly. Without all the blockage. So. Okay, question number two. Did your family have a song that everyone would belt out on road trips or vacations when you're growing up now, and if you didn't, can you think of a time that maybe in college with you and your buddies went on spring break somewhere that there was a song?
- [73:08]
B
So my parents got divorced when I was five and I don't have any brothers and sisters. And I was raised primarily by my mother and my stepfather who liked to listen to classical music and he was quite taciturn. So when we went on trips, there was no singing at the time. Okay, now when my wife and I had children, we did sing in the car.
- [73:32]
C
Excellent. Let's hear it. What'd you come up with?
- [73:36]
B
And then we also. And we still do at certain holidays and events, we would sing kind of as Grace, and we also sang to the kids when they were going to sleep at night, so.
- [73:51]
C
Wonderful.
- [73:52]
B
Day is done, Day is done Gone the sun from the lake from the hills from the sky. That song, wonderful. We would sing to them. And that was a big part of our nuclear family tradition, was singing to them when they went to sleep. And then also, as I said, we still do it now, singing for people's birthday. So we sing the traditional birthday song, but we also sing a song from Waldorf because our kids went to the Waldorf school.
- [74:20]
C
Okay.
- [74:23]
B
And then singing kind of like Grace before we would eat a meal.
- [74:28]
C
That's beautiful. I love that. Can you think of the song that was your favorite song that you and your friends would belt out your senior year of high school?
- [74:44]
B
I honestly just have, like, a. It's like a total blank. I transferred in my senior year of high school from a school in Massachusetts to a school in Arizona.
- [74:55]
C
Big difference in music, I bet.
- [74:57]
B
My dad lived in Arizona, and I was concerned with who was going to pay for college. I didn't know how that was going to happen, But Arizona had this amazing thing if you were in state, and so my senior year.
- [75:10]
C
You still do. Yeah. It's amazing.
- [75:11]
B
Yeah. My senior year of college in Arizona. High school in Arizona. I just had one friend. I was like, this was a catastrophe from a social standpoint. So I don't honestly, really remember singing with him. Oh, I remember singing Brandy. Oh, yeah, Brandy. I remember singing that with a friend of mine when I was in college. Yeah. So we used to go out in the desert and buy a brick of.22ammunition, and we would just shoot all day long out in the desert. And then on the drive back, when that song would come on, we would just start belting that out. Brandi, you're a fine girl. What a good wife you would be.
- [75:51]
C
Yeah.
- [75:52]
B
And we would argue about the lyrics. Walks through a silent town or walks through a sailing town. And this is before you could Google stuff.
- [75:59]
C
Right, Right, right.
- [76:01]
B
I can't remember which side I'd take, but it would be like, sailing silent. Sailing silent. Sailing silent.
- [76:07]
C
You know, there was a book out that was written years ago about often misquoted lyrics and songs, and it's. It's really. It's really something. There's a bathroom on the right. Bad moon on the rise.
- [76:21]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I. I thought it was Jokers to the left of me Jokers to the left of me Clouds on my right. I thought it was Jocast to the left, Clouds to my right Instead of Jokers to my left Clowns on my right.
- [76:39]
C
Yep.
- [76:39]
B
Sounds like.
- [76:41]
C
Yep. No, but you know, when you're. Well, come on, man. There's some of the radios that we listened to growing up, it weren't necessarily the most sophisticated audio systems to. To get clarity, you know, and it
- [76:56]
B
seems like part of the art of singing those kinds of songs is how you pronounce words. It's not like proper diction. It's. It's the way it's coming out of your mouth is part of the musicality of it rather than.
- [77:08]
C
Does it fit the rhythm?
- [77:09]
B
Does it fit? Yeah, exactly.
- [77:12]
C
Yeah, exactly. Right. How about songs that get the positive juices flowing? Do you have one or a couple of songs that make you want to go out and crush the day?
- [77:25]
B
Yeah, the one that. The one that I've heard recently is Kings of Leon. Sex. Your sex on fire.
- [77:33]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [77:33]
B
There's something about that's just so up tempo and. And sexy and filled with primal energy, let's say.
- [77:43]
C
Yeah, that's a good one. Kings of Leon. That's a real good one. Do you have a guilty pleasure song, like one that.
- [77:52]
B
Yeah, I wrote that down. It's Fighter by Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood. Underwood, yeah, Carrie Underwood.
- [77:59]
C
I know that song. Yeah. Really?
- [78:02]
B
Yeah, it's a guilty. It's a guilty pleasure.
- [78:05]
C
That's cool.
- [78:06]
B
I'm inexplicably drawn to this, especially the music video. And I love the fact that Keith Urban is from New Zealand and he passes himself off as a country western guy.
- [78:19]
C
Yes.
- [78:19]
B
And I. And I love the pronunciation in that. In that song because he calls himself the fatter. I'll be your father.
- [78:25]
C
Yes. Well, you know, that's so funny that you. You said that, because I remember the first time that I saw him interviewed, I'm like, what the hell? You know, because he's singing these song and he's got the twang to his voice and you're going, how is that possible? You know? Yeah, it sounds like Crocodile Dundee or something. Singing is great, though.
- [78:46]
B
It's a branding and marketing triumph. You know that he loves this music and he found a way to fit right into it in a way that people accept him and love him and. Yeah, so that's my. That's my guilty pleasure for sure.
- [78:57]
C
That's excellent. That's excellent. I'm going to ask you my favorite question, and then we'll wrap everything up. Sometimes there are songs that you hear that ring so true that the song's lyrics can stop you in your tracks. And the song sounds like it was either written specifically for you or by you. What's that song?
- [79:20]
B
This is where I came undone, because I wrote down the first song and then it was like, oh, there's that other one. Oh, there's that other one. Oh, there's that other one. So there were a number of them. And the through line of all of these is, to me, it's Christian. In 2019, right before all the COVID crap happened, my wife and I were living in Buffalo, outside of Buffalo, New York, and we went to see Jesus Christ Superstar. We had season tickets for this theater, and it was a traveling company that did Jesus Christ Superstar. And we saw it. It was fine. It was good, whatever. And on the way home, driving home, I just lost it. And it was all around this concept that Jesus died for us, for me, that he sacrificed. And so all these songs have this concept of faith and believing and trust and sacrifice. All of them. And it couldn't just come up with one. They were all of them.
- [80:36]
C
Well, let's hear.
- [80:37]
B
Well, okay. So. Well, so one of them was. I heard it recently, and I've heard this song a million times since the 70s, but for the first time, the lyric just popped through. You know how that happens?
- [80:47]
C
Yes.
- [80:47]
B
You can literally hear it a thousand times. And then the thousand and one time, it's Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. And the lyric is, you see, it's all clear. You were meant to be here from the beginning. That really just. It's still now, like, I get these goosebumps all over me that. Yeah, my guide said you chose to be here.
- [81:15]
C
Right.
- [81:15]
B
You have a purpose. Your life has meaning. You were meant to be here. To me, that's like the words of Jesus, right? You have meaning. No one is just a biological robot. You have a soul. You're connected to the rest of us, living and dead. You're a child of God. You are meant to be here no matter what's going on in your life or how worthless you think it is, or you think you're broken. No, you're meant to be here. You see, it's all clear.
- [81:44]
C
That's very cool.
- [81:46]
B
That really got me. And then the you2 walk on song. It's a place that has to be believed to be seen. It's a place that has to be believed in order to be seen. And Then he goes on in that song and says, all that you fashion. All that you make. All that you build. All that you break, you'll leave it behind. All the material stuff isn't that.
- [82:23]
C
I knew exactly when you said that, it was just like, oh, I gotcha. Yeah, come home. All that you deal.
- [82:32]
B
All that you deal. All that you steal. All, everything. You're going to leave it all behind and go to a place that has to be believed to be seen. And I know that you too because I was really into them for a while. They are a Christian band that flies under the radar. That's what they are.
- [82:51]
C
Yep. For sure.
- [82:52]
B
Yeah. And then this is the one where I. Today when I was listening to it, I just started crying just like I did after seeing Jesus Christ Superstar. And it's the hillsong United is the name of the band. And it's oceans where feet may fail. I am yours, you are mine. Lead me to trust without borders. Keep my eyes above the waves. Keep my eyes above the. I love that we have the power of where we put our attention. And there's that old saying of look not long into the abyss because the abyss is looking back into you. This gets back to that whole concept of we are creators or we are co creating our lives. And I take the. You know, help me keep my eyes above the waves. In other words, to not look into the abyss, to not steer my attention towards the things that are horrifying, the things that are frightening, the things that make me angry. Help me to keep. Help me to keep standing tall. Yeah. Help me ride above it like that. And then the call that band from the 90s. I still believe, you know, through all of the stuff. Through all the stuff of life. All the pain, all the tears, all the everything. I still believe. The beginning of Kashmir by Led Zeppelin. By Led Zeppelin. I'm a traveler of both time and space.
- [84:33]
C
Yes.
- [84:34]
B
And all will be revealed like this is. These are all these deep spiritual messages. Sarah McLaughlin. When I saw that, when I remembered the name of the song, because I don't remember names of songs really well for some reason. The name of the song that I love is called Fallen. We're all fallen. We're all trying to make our way home. This is why we feel broken. This is why we feel hopeless. This is why we feel scared. We're all trying to find our way back from the fall. You know, when a third of the angels and all of us turned away from God and we're trying to find our way back. And then there's Two more, if I can say them. One is Brandon Lake, who's a Christian singer, and I think the name of the song is Rest On Us. I love that song, too, that the spirit of God is here. And the song is basically like a prayer. Come rest on us. Come rest on us. Be present with us. And then the last one I wrote down was also you two. It's electrical storm. And there's a line in there which is, if. If the sky can crack, there must be some way back to love and only love. And I have thought about that lyric a lot when my wife and I have been married for 30 years and when we've had really some difficult times, I've thought about that lyric. If the sky can crack, there must be some way back to love and only love. Something that is beyond whatever it is that we're having problems with right now that we're arguing about. And. And this. This lyric actually reminds me of a. Of a short Rumi poem that means so much to me, which is beyond ideas of right and wrongdoing, there is a field, a singing field. I will meet you there.
- [86:30]
C
I love Roomie, too. Big fan. That's. That's wonderful. And thank you so much for sharing those songs. I know sometimes they can be very personal, and I love it when people are vulnerable and they share them and they actually show their hearts in this. So thank you very much, and thank
- [86:55]
B
you for asking me to do this, because it revealed something about myself that I wasn't totally aware of as I sat writing these things down and going through YouTube and saying, oh, I want to listen to that one. What's that one called? And so on that. That when I got to that I am yours and you are mine. Oceans where feet may fail. That's where I just lost it. I just started crying as I'm listening to these lyrics, almost laughing at myself, like, what are you doing?
- [87:28]
C
Well, I'm gonna wrap us up now. Again, thank you. Well, it's just about time to cue the music for today's episode, but don't forget to like, like, comment and subscribe to the Drop the Needle podcast to stay up to date on our latest episodes. I'd also like to thank our very special guest, Mr. Peter McLaughlin. All right, my Drop the Needle posse. Like Billy Joel says, from the highs to the lows to the end of the show, this is the end of our show. Until next time, this is Jim Allstott wishing you infinite health, happiness, and the perfect playlist for your life. Thank you again for being the best part of us. Catch you next time.