Transcript for:
Lecture on Phil Stutz and Barry Michels

that what's going on now everything's falling apart and every institution can't be trusted every official is corruptible it would be quite a conspiracy you have rivers that are on fire it's going [ __ ] crazy so the question is do do those things have anything to do with each other or is it just coincidental that's my godfather Phil stuts if you recognize him it might be because Jonah Hill made a Netflix documentary about him a year ago called stuts but why did Jonah Hill make a movie about my godfather well Phil is an alien specifically he's a gray from Zeta reticuli and it's time that the public know the hard truth about my family and its Origins just kidding but Phil does have an almost Clairvoyant ability to size anybody up instantaneously tell them where they're blocked and give them some viable routes forward in life most people don't know he was also the Riker's Island prison psychiatrist for 5 years so evaluated and helping people was almost a matter of life or death for him from the start what are some words you'd use to describe rker is hell in his early 30s Phil became Afflicted with a mysterious condition called chronic fatigue syndrome the condition involves extreme and constant exhaustion he could barely get out of bed when it first hit but this breakdown was bizarrely generative he found a turn of the century Austrian philosopher named Rudolph Steiner who came to Define his worldview and influence his practice and he also started to attract some of the most impressive people in the world as patients if you're a fan of this channel you know I'm interested in some pretty out there topics fringe science UFOs and the Mysterious nature of our reality here I wanted to give you a glimpse of my biggest childhood influences that opened me up to the prospect that life is a little more trippy than we realize in the first place not only am I talking about Phil I'm also talking about my dad Barry Michaels Phil's longtime business business partner who helped develop Phil's ideas and communicate them to the world I'm so lucky to have my dad as a father he's one of the hardest working and most inspiring people I know and he's turned around the lives of countless people CEOs of billion dollar companies actors producers directors some of whom were on the verge of self-destruction before seeing him a lot of this is outlined in a great New Yorker profile on him called Hollywood Shadows together Phil and my dad wrote A New York Times best-selling book called the tools and a followup called coming alive their practice involves mental visualizations they give their patients for facing daunting everyday situations unlike traditional cognitive behavioral therapy these visualizations incorporate archetypal yian symbology if all of this sounds a little wacky or insane or like a ridiculous La cliche it does to me too but whatever Phil and my dad are doing empirically seems to work due to confidentiality we can't get into their patients identities but Phil and my dad are paid homage to in a few popular movies and shows that you might be familiar with in this interview I wanted to get a little deeper with both of them on the laws of human nature what motivates people what to do when faced with the most desperate and dark situations and how to reconcile the sometimes very disperate and conflicted sides of oneself we also get into their favorite philosophers and some of the esoteric inspiration for a lot of their work we taped this a year ago but it feels all the more relevant as the world seems to be going absolutely nuts with social isolation geopolitical turmoil and late stage capitalist decadence it also felt important for me to put this out now and not just sit on it because both my dad and Phil are facing some not super fun health challenges but this episode is a celebration of their work and Legacy so without further Ado please welcome this week's amazing American Al ists Phil STS and my father Barry [Music] Michaels different parts of the rain have different activity but you know that don't [Music] you you maybe you should interview [Music] me before we get started I wanted to give a huge shout out to today's sponsor surf shark VPN n if you're into this show and like researching crazy and sometimes dangerous topics like UFOs and anti-gravity you probably care about keeping your identity Anonymous while surfing the web you also probably want uncensored access to the best sources of information on all these edgy controversial topics and you want this uncensored access wherever you happen to be in the world surf shark keeps your online identity hidden by encrypting all of the information sent between your device and the internet so data harvesting companies and third parties can't track you and cyber criminals can't hack you a VPN works by swapping the real location of your device with a new IP address from anywhere around the world and it secures personal information when you use Wi-Fi outside of your home as 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a 30-day money back guarantee so there's literally no risk in trying this out and now back to my dad and Phil so uh the Netflix documentary was pretty crazy I feel like it's gotten a lot of a claim like a it's it's really uh it's really blown things up your voicemail is now if you're calling about the Netflix documentary or calling about therapy because you saw the Netflix documentary um please you know it's a referral to our website you know where they can get a tools trained therapy deflection yeah it's calmed down a little bit I would say I'm getting maybe 7 to 10 calls a week and they leave messages despite the fact that I'm telling them not to leave mess oh that's funny how do they get your number you think like Google or something have no idea that's it's so strange I guess people's numbers are pretty findable yeah how do you think you do you think you were sort of faded to become a psychotherapist do you think like your childhood you know within that were the seeds of your profession definitely but not quite as directly as as you just described it I I knew really from a pretty early age that I really wanted to and felt bound to have as positive an effect as I could on people's lives for a long time I thought that was going to take the form of going into politics actually it never occurred to me to be a therapist and then gradually it morphed into well maybe this is the most direct one-on-one way that I can affect people in their lives and the more I did it the more I realized without being a modest I'm really good at that you know I'm really good at that so it became one of those things that I think I knew from the beginning I was meant to do and then realized oh I'm good at it you know what why do you think you're good at it I think partly I grew up in a family that was disposed toward self-examination and Analysis probably a little too much so for L like one of the lessons I had to learn in life was excuse the language shut the [ __ ] up and just enjoy life you know a little bit you don't have to examine every single thing that you do or say right but um yeah I think it partly was that um partly I think I was always very self-examining like not self-questioning but just like why am I thinking that thought or why am I having those urg es or you know whatever it is because I had a Natural Curiosity about myself and I don't think it veered into narcissism or anything but it did dispose me toward thinking of what are the unconscious motivations that are operating right now in you know in yourself uh I didn't often find an answer but at least I was disposed to disposed to questioning yeah and at what point does self-examination become narcissistic cuz I look at a lot of the coastal bgea class or whatever and it feels like this sort of bottomless soup schmorgus Board of like just masturbatory yeah you have like a um yeah you have like a menu of like eight things that you do for yourself and like none of them quite work and you're still unhappy and you kind of consume them un you know unconsciously so what yeah what's the difference between that and meaningful progress to me it becomes masturbatory when the purpose is no longer to have a positive impact on the people around you or on the world around you when in other words when it's just self-examination for its own sake that to me is kind of a bad sign it's really disguised narcissism frankly and I think that what prevents it from doing that is that you adhere to a specific goal am I trying to get myself to do something that I typically avoid am I trying to get myself to stop losing my temper am I trying to get myself myself to stop putting myself down in my head even small goals like that can root or anchor the work in reality and in something that's actually achievable time there's also I think there are a lot of people that like it's like they want to stop everything and heal themselves or something so before they can like are ready to do anything they feel some like primordial childhood pain that they have to like get over before they do something in the real world and I think it's probably more complicated than that where it's like you solve the pain partially by like trying to do something in the real world and and by working on it and self-examining if you don't have the self-examination I think that's probably pretty unhealthy but you know what I mean like where people are like you know I'm I'm going to heal myself and then they go to South America they do iasa like 10 times in a month or something right I don't really believe in removing yourself from real life to work on something and then returning an improved person I'm not saying that that um can't be helpful in certain kind of extreme cases like for example if you have somebody who's a severe drug addict or a severe alcoholic it's actually good for them to go on Retreat a sober Retreat where they learn the rules of sobriety and practice 12 steps you know etc etc before they return to society but mostly mostly for most of us I think problems get solved in the real world as the problems occur and you use new Tools in addressing those problems yeah I think for me something that's been challenging has been like growing up with you and having being privy to a lot of kind of more interesting kind of esoteric knowledge or whatever and then thinking that that exonerates me from like the trials and tribulations of like everyday life which is really like the reality itself is set up in a way to challenge you to become your best self and that's like the most sacred interesting thing there is the benol uh challenge of of like the small stuff not like some esoteric knowledge yes yes or maybe the to put it differently any esoteric true esoteric knowledge you get comes from like day-to-day Behavior or something yeah a lot of mystical Traditions would not even allow you to study you know the esoterica that they propagated until you were like in in your well into your 30s yeah cabala you're not supposed to do it until you're 35 great example yeah they wanted you rooted in the material world they wanted you dealing with material supposed to have like a spouse and be grounded yeah yeah which makes sense I mean it's like I live alone in Laurel cany and read about conspiracies all day and it's not exactly like the best ingredients for like mental health exact I love there's a Nichi quote which is like the measure of a man um is is or a man is measured by how much truth he can accommodate without descending into madness wow and beauti there's something about you know like uh developing sort of a higher spiritual sense or Clairvoyance or something which is like um two steps forward one step back and almost you're almost responsibly moving into a state of psychosis or something you know that's particularly um moving in nii's case because he did descend into that's right you know I think syphilis aided in that descent but maybe but also from a psychological or spiritual point of view he he told a lot of truths that no one was willing to look at totally at the time and yeah Academia shunned him and who knows that that didn't send him over the edge yeah he was a genius he was a a genius and totally not socialized in a way that I think Geniuses often are you know the story of his Madness are you talking about like the the looking at the cows leaping in the fields or what you talk there was a there was an EP he was already beginning to descend into madness but there was a particular incident where he was he was living in Vienna at the time and he looked out his window and I watched a Coachman you know there were no cars at that time Coachman was um flogging his horse just mercilessly flogging his horse nii ran downstairs ran out to The Coachman threw his arms around the around the horse that's right and then never recovered he went mad at that [Music] point so it's almost like he was so overtaken with his compassion for this animal that's wild he couldn't take it yeah I don't know why this that reminded me of this but at the end of his life nicolea Tesla fell in love with a pigeon he lived in this uh apartment near Bryant Park and he would like write love letters to this pigeon and like thought that the pigeon was you know in love with him and he was also you know totally antisocial character who was ripped off by everybody around him right I don't know it is yeah I think there is something on you know on the edge of Madness and I am by no means advocating Madness or anything like that go crazy but there's something about the Deep empathy that you can feel toward another living being yeah particularly of not of your own species that comes to Encompass a kind of um I don't know a kind of Beauty in the world it's hard to bear in a certain way yeah totally yeah and I guess the the challeng or the goal is to like properly reintegrate As you move towards that greater and worldly empathy or whatever exactly because I think if you if you do too much all at once I I don't think that that's really healthy and there's a whole strain of our culture in fact that I think romanticizes that romantic Madness you know of NIS and of Teslas or whatever and I you know the the important thing is if you're going to skate on that edge you have to be very strong strongly rooted in reality MH where you can actually lose your mind yeah to totally I mean some of my favorite people are sort of considered were considered crazy in their time or even are considered a little crazy now yeah it's interesting but I think that that um vertical tether where you get these interesting downloads often comes from not being as horizontally Tethered to the social Matrix or whatever and it's just I don't know trade-off by the way your use of that as a metaphor I think is really important the the the horizontal tether is in the here and now what am I doing to move myself through time in other words I'm moving horizontally the vertical tether is there's something much greater than me going on here at all times and I have no idea whether this has any relevance or not but if you think about it that's the cross ah the horizontal and the vert in a certain way I don't I don't know that Christians actually believe this but this is my interpretation it and I'm not a Christian yeah my interpretation of that is that you we're responsible for two Dimensions simultaneously the dimension in which we move forward willfully through time yeah and yet constantly in each present moment stay Tethered to something greater than ourselves that's really cool then you become a living cross in a certain way I love that I love that and that's kind of a this is a philosopher Rene Gerard and he talks about you know horizont the horizontal tether would be like Mimis like the imitate the inherently imitative nature of human beings and um the hor the the um sorry the vertical tether would be uh the Kingdom of Heaven sort of residing within you or you know God the Divine or the Holy Spirit or something and uh yeah I don't know I I think the more I actually descend into my own Madness and think about the nature of reality I I think that um you know I'm I'm I'm I'm getting interested in like a lot of the quantum uh spookiness or whatever like entanglement and stuff like that the the more I think about it my model of reality is like sort of um probable Futures and probable past the present is like a handshake between the future in the past or something in a in a weird way and um and it's it's like the the the present is somehow like a collapsing function of those things and their Dimensions what do you mean collapsing function it's a it's a I think I think there are dimensions Beyond this one where time is happen time isn't really a factor where it's sort of happening simultaneously and so I think and I think when you get to certain levels of subatomic scale uh the time Factor starts to break down and so like things like entanglement can actually be explained by like retrocausality M and instead the classic double slit experiment can be can like I think John archal Wheeler a famous mid-century physicist figured out that if you you know uh detect the electron mid-flight it actually retrocausal retr causally changes the electron from from the start of it being shot you know towards the double slit or whatever and um I I I think I think things sort of break down TimeWise on a subatomic scale on a very small scale and so I think there's a dimension Beyond ours that is uh time agnostic maybe and then the the present is like a it's sort of a product of our epistemology as humans and uh you know it's like almost like a the instantiation of the demier metaphor is like time and um and we and the way we perceive it I'm not I'm now I sound like a skitso but I have no idea what you're talking about but it doesn't sound schizophrenic to me okay thanks the one Association I have with what you're saying though is that that handshake coming from the past and the handshake coming from the future they meet in the Eternal present and to me that's where human Free Will has some relevance it doesn't have complete control but it has some relevance as to how I take what's coming from the past and use it to move into the future and I believe that if you're conscious of that least you get more of a sense of ongoing coherence ongoing purpose yes in your life H how do you develop that because I'm not going to lie so I I um obviously adhere to the tools and and think that you know that's very empowering having like these um mental regimens you can go through in situations that you typically face in your life that might set you off in certain ways uh but then I'm also somewhat sympathetic to the law of attraction I just don't like the way it's written about I think it's written about in a sort of Escapist like um you you just can think your way into things or whatever if I think this then I'll attract this but I've experienced it before I've experienced like the ability to sort of quote unquote manifest stuff the question I have is like sometimes I I set I feel a thing and I'm like this is I I feel this feels good and right this feels like the right version of the future for me and I kind of like I know I'm going to like hit this and then things start to go well and cohere like you're you're mentioning and then there are other times where I'm like I just want to like commit to a thing but there the motivations are sort of negative or like my there the in there's too much inter internal decoherence in terms of my like ability to like really be self-aligned towards that goal where the law of attraction or whatever the the thing isn't working and so maybe you reject the premise and you think that you can't think in a way that affects matter that you know brings things into your life I I think that but um but yeah what what what is that like I think there's some way in which your internal orientation and the Purity with which you want a thing really affects getting the thing and then so there's some layer beyond the just like law of attraction create a vision board and like get get the thing that actually involves like your orientation towards what you want and that being like pure I'm I'm not sure I'm answering your question so stop me if I'm if I'm missing it but to me there's one gigantic problem with the law of attraction at least as I've heard it espoused and admittedly my knowledge of this is is not comprehensive but the one real problem with it is that it just does not acknowledge the existence of evil I don't care how many Jews in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany you know created a vision board or asked for what they wanted etc etc I don't care what they did yeah they were going to get slaughtered right if they stayed there right you know kind of thing and I think there's a certain danger thankfully we're not in such you know exent circumstances but um I think there's a certain almost like hidden arrogance to the idea that what you want yeah even matters that much in the in the larger scheme of the Universe I think it's important to want things don't get me wrong I think it's important to work toward them but sometimes when I when I hear that stuff there seems to be sort of a sort of a comforting but to me entirely false assumption that if I want it enough it'll happen it'll come to I will I will Attract it to me right when I really think that misses a big part of life which is there are certain things that are going to happen to me some of them may be good fortune others maybe bad fortune I have nothing to do with them yeah I agree I also think the way a lot of people treat the Law of Attraction and things of that variety are uh of the occult variety where there where it's kind of like a witchy Seance you know I'm going to I'm going to like say the thing over and over again until it happens right and that feels weird and like it's almost like you don't have enough faith in the delightful randomness of life where like you know it's actually might bring you something that's like better than you can even conceive of or that you might initially think is awful but turns out to be a great lesson totally you've told me before that uh obsession is portable and you've also told me that deprivation creates motivation and so is there something to kind of cutting off your lower kind of lyic desires that uh create space for something higher 100% so if you're getting into what's real what's the truth what are you real I I just read this quote by this guy he says you know you know how you find out if something is real really who you are as a person what you really believe in he says are you willing to do something that it cost you money to do but do it anyway which means you lose money every it's like I'm losing money every second I'm talking to you so I I thought that was because see the the scientists think that they're going to work out some kind of an algorithm or something to do this and that's exactly wrong other words this is like stepping off the head of the edge of a cliff but the thing is if you um if you're willing to at least entertain the possibility that there's a higher level here of wisdom and of um how would you say it and of um a higher standard uh for how you conduct yourself if you're willing to entertain that as at least a possibility then you you at least you have a little bit of a step towards Freedom um and and the bet the driving excuse me the the driving um Force for that is uh the this I call the light in the darkness is going right into the darkness where you can't possibly know what the answer is and you go there anyway and you go there on uh spec so to speak do you think human beings have kind of a death Drive well to me the Death Drive is the same thing as um as the death Instinct you know so in in it was he you know when Freud was 65 years old he said oh [ __ ] this doesn't work he was pretty verbal about it um but he had to make it into a theory he had to make it into a theory and he called it the or an instinct he called it the death Instinct so and what he said was so interesting he says the death instinct is the Unstoppable irrational unaru arguable entropy in the human race so he so basically he says you have an instinct to destroy yourself you or not even destroy you have an instinct to to repeat over and over and over again something that that erodes your identity and blocks your ability to move forward because you can't ever win he was also a very pessimistic uh guy he got famous by being Did You Know by the way that in in in Europe until I think 1940 or something he was a laughing stock it was when he came over here I think in I don't know when it was 19th that because the Americans are always looking for the next new thing the Europeans are looking for the last thing what do you think there's uh there negatives about therapy like I think of therapy in some ways as like there so many negatives I think of it as like like a very Boomer concept or something and I you know I think like the the divorce rate has shot up and everybody just wants like this perfect life and there's something about the the Boomer Vibe which is very like I can have whatever I want like this sort of endless Frontier feeling and so yeah is there something and then is there some way in which like it replaces like what should be a traditional family role like maybe you should just speak to your significant other about these things I mean it's hard to answer because it so depends on the therapy the context I agree anybody that says it's you know only bad is wrong and then anybody that says it's only good is also I mean the thing I think 99% of the time in practice it's it's pretty right it's Prett like Freudian talk therapy is pretty ineffective and stupid or whatever but even I even then like certain people you can get Hope by just m voicing your thing to some and you have and you you feel repressed in your local environment and right so that that can be helpful but yeah I to me the most common problem of of most talk therapy is that it's just masturbatory right it doesn't go anywhere there's no articulated goal there's no road map to get to the goal it's just sit talk pay your money and then come back next week yeah to me is a complete waste of time totally yeah it's a it's a total waste of time they're like how do you feel about that and you're like you tell me what you think about what I'm saying right now cuz I just spoke for 10 minutes and you don't it's my goal I mean I'm not saying that I necessarily reach it every single time but my goal is for every patient to leave every session feel feeling like I have my marching orders I'm going to do this this week whether it's something in the outside world or something with their Shadow or whatever um and then I'm going to report back next week to how I did you know how how it went you know in monetization of anything always involves sucking the soul out of it because you want to sell it and the more generic it is the easier it is to sell that pissed me off and one thing about me I think not saying I'm better than any other shrinks or anything like that but I do get pissed off at this stuff and when they don't get pissed off I get even more pissed off well you just said something really interesting which is that the um more fungible something is or the more interoperable it is the easier it is to scale and monetize which seems to be the whole ethos of our modern medical system where [ __ ] a that healing is not this idiosyncratic onetoone process maybe the Healer sort of learns it in this sort of hermetic interesting way they're called to it instead if you think about the FDA and and the protocol there the person doing out the medication has to be interoperable inherently because it's all about scalability and how much you can sort of replicate the experiment across different practitioners and so the practitioner is merely a cog and a machine who has a menu of treatments to Dole out to to patients [ __ ] that's evil man I'm going to tell you see it gets me so pissed off I don't know I mean you talking about about medicine and Psychiatry yeah same yeah um but you you're probably right it probably applies to both and you know in slightly different ways yeah and that's where the tools came in so number one I knew there was a gap and and we had nothing we had no dog in the fight no no tools no nothing to fill in that gap which it made me think that everybody was other an idiot or corrupt I was thinking about how in traditional therapy you're paying this person and you save all of your problems for them and they just listen and your friends who are idiots give you advice yes unsolicited yes and you want your friends just to listen and you want your therapist to give you advice so that's why I got the idea of tools and what what really oh how would you say it [Music] um what really inspired me was the idea not that I was into making money I there was nothing extraordinary about me except for one thing I couldn't let somebody leave my [ __ ] office without something if I had to make it up on the spot whatever if I had to give him a pair of my underpants from junior high school but they have you have to give them something whether it's conceptual or physical something they have to walk out with something yeah and they and the shrinks tried to say that's there's something wrong with that yeah you're you're um you demanding immediate gratification you're immature and you know my very respectfully my my um response to that is you were a [ __ ] liar idiot idiot so you you had if you if you see CU it it's it's funny you know in some ways the um the psychoanalyst with the beginning of marketing I think it I think that's actually true by the way there there was some history of that well it was um Edward bernes who I think was Freud's nephew sort of brought in actually a lot of ideas that the Nazis sort of based their propaganda off of to America and created kind of modern consumerism which I'm sure is an oversimplified narrative but no I don't think it's that over I think that's right see the the the idea whether you want to call it psychoanalysis or rof it doesn't matter what you call it it means there's something going on in the human psyche that isn't quite clear but it's influential not clear but in influential now a guy who's marketing oriented he's going to have a wet dream right because no one can contradict what he's saying because no one can characterize it in any kind of um ordered consistent way so I I could tell you hey I I know I told you I do this for free but when you didn't realize you had a dream last night and when you told me the dream today I knew that you wanted me to um charge you for my services here right it can't be disproven right um so you think there's almost to characterize what you're saying you're saying there's almost a fault line in modern therapy self-help maybe even the medical profession where you have one side that's sort of state power and consumerist and then the other side that's sort of empowering the patient yes in a way that's almost probably subversive incidentally to any power structure yeah the the one thing I I want to be careful about that is making it like a one-size uh fit all type model because look there's somebody most of them these guys that I meet most of them don't know [ __ ] but they still some of them still have Goodwill and the reason the only reason anybody gets help by that is by the Good Will of the therapist what do you think is the most ubiquitously um applicable and Powerful tool that you and Phil has have developed you know I would answer that differently over the many years that I've worked with Phil but I would say that for the past five years or so I would say it's not one particular tool but it would be working with your shadow that has gone the farthest has I've gained the most mileage out of it both working on myself as well as working with my patients there's something about just in case people don't know the shadow is sort of like The Unwanted inferior side of your own personality whatever it is you feel ashamed about or embarrassed of that's your Shadow you explain to me the idea of a shadow it's the version of yourself that you want to hide from the world the most and this is what I pictured that day me at 14 and um typically you hide it from the outside world because you're a little ashamed of it and embarrassed by it but as you establish a relationship with it and by a relationship I literally mean as as you alluded to earlier talking to it you know on a regular basis daily and having it talk back to you and learning that it actually knows things that you don't know that that um to me I've gotten the most mileage out of that because you never know what what someone's Shadow is going to is going to say to them I can give somebody a tool like the reversal of desire and I can pretty much guarantee that if they use it it they'll get themselves to do things that they have a hard time doing yeah but with the shadow work it's anyone's guess as to what the shadow is going to tell them and where it's going to lead them and so it's a more exciting Journey for me to follow with a patient because I'm sort of watching as they are watching it unfold in unpredictable directions yeah it is so unpredictable it kind of reminds me of that Donnie dark have you ever seen the movie Donnie Darko no um well at one point he says the main character he goes he's like I I'm I'm I'm fulfilling the god program and when he does that he's able to sort of travel back and forth in time or whatever and I think there's something to experiencing synchronicities or like Kismet or whatever that comes from listening to that like internal voice that often tells you to do stuff that's seemingly innan and actually crazy like if sometimes you listen to your Shadow and it's like you know run around the block or like go go to this random part of LA or whatever um and then you do it and then you like meet a person that's like somehow instrumental and like a thing that you're supposed to do or you get some insight while you're there and I think you know the the sort of like Butterfly Effect like where if you like change one little thing it has this like massive mult applicative effect down the line if you like listen to that voice it somehow can get you back on track my question to you would be how do you reconcile a tool like that with like reversal of desire which is really coming more from a place of like I need to like achieve some sort of external output and I need to kind of fog myself into submission to to do that that seems like it would cut against listening to like some internal voice that you've kind of repressed I just think think for most people both are necessary they need some way of getting themselves to do the things that they're not doing and they need that because they need to experience themselves as having some sort of positive agency in the world like I can get myself to get up and do this difficult task return this email make this phone call etc etc um and I've never met anyone that doesn't need some of that you know kind of thing the the other side can't you end up with the shadow revolting a if you end up being this crazy s of tkm that's exactly why I think it's very important to to do Shadow work and to have a program with the shadow simultaneously because the shadow can be the one to say you know what don't do the reversal of Desire today take a walk around the block smell the breeze SM the breeze smell the roses yeah you know Etc ET smell the breeze but it the the shadow will see things in the world that you don't see one of my favorite stories of this is this was early on when I had just learned about the Shadow and I used to use him in sessions with patients whenever I felt stumped you know like I don't know what's going on so I had this patient he was a kind of a very by the book he was an accountant not a very emotional guy at all I was having trouble getting him to even talk like he just wasn't talking very much was like a first session with the guy yeah um and in sort of exasperation I turned to my shadow and I said tell me what to do like what what what am I supposed to do here yeah and he said look at his eyes I looked into his eyes and I saw a tear was not a real tear but it was like the vision of a tear coming out of an eye and so I took a took a deep breath and I said you know sitting with you I'm getting the strangest feeling of just immense sadness and he burst into tears and opened up completely and we had a great session after that now I never would have said anything like that if it hadn't been for my shadow I never would have even perceived him as sad you know it was the shadow that saw something that I couldn't see and that's why I don't really see these as competing things working on the reversal of desire and doing the shadow work the Shadow work can enhance yeah I think a Silla and caribdis of a of a young person in the country who is trying to face adversity is how to listen to your kind of inner voice systematically and how do you differentiate between you know like you talk about the yungi and Shadow the part of you that you want to kind of you know repress or compartmentalize and not show to other people which could be a really great source of wisdom how do you differentiate between that and some demonic inner voice you know like you have the proverbial Angel and the devil and people definitely get internal messages all the time that are just satiating their most low kind of ponic needs here's the thing it's weird I I was thinking about all these things yesterday here it is you H and no one's going to like this you have to go on Instinct and you have to create your own value system it doesn't matter what anybody else tells you your own and it can't be based on proof if it's based on proof it isn't worth [ __ ] so the the most important things have to be um I call it Faith you know that pyramid did I ever show you that yes birthday cake yes so the first the bottom line the foundation of a healthy view of of um both an individual and uh political ideology whatever is that you choose to believe it you choose to believe it and that's what we call Faith and it faith is an active choice and it's not based on being right if you can do that then the next Le level of this thing is uh action not because you're guaranteeing any result at all but because Faith gives you the ability to take action even if there's absolutely no no proof at all and then go ahead but I think what you're sort of suggesting is uh trusting your own experience in a way which is a kind of subversive idea because you know we've had organized religion for for thousands of years and is there not something that's super adaptive about that and is you know the reason people seem to be going crazy and maybe this ends in sort of a war of all against all or something is because of a breakdown of religion which is actually very socially adaptive and it keeps people kind of uh in order in many ways yeah look I mean I understand everything you're saying but it's not I don't think that's tenable or viable over a long period of time one one reason is people's awareness of themselves is changing and it's not necessarily for the good um but the top of that uh birthday cake is confidence and it's so whether you're right or wrong wrong whether you're Republican or Democrat however you look at it you're going to you have to be honest with yourself you're going to you're going to end up making decisions and valuing Things based on the gut there's no way around that now but there there are um aspects of of this that are subject and there there's a healthy part of your guts your instincts that's the best way to say and it's but you can't get it by thinking about figuring it out one time you do get it is when you have to make a big decision because then you have to make the decision anyway and then you it's going to affect you anyway then you get serious with yourself about that now just to go back to the other thing we were saying I view the highest um uh species of um the highest species of Courage is the ability to walk right into the unknown without any guarantees of anything and keep going you don't have to get a good result you just have to keep going it's like walking right into the darkness and that if if you're honest with yourself you can um uh you you can find out uh what you what you really want and who you really are I guess I remember towards the end of my time at Google I was like very depressed and like I didn't know why I was there it was like this very this abstract job that I had no sort of you know real feeling towards a relationship with and you know I was I felt very lost and um from that feeling of you know being kind of lost at sea and not knowing how I was going to like fulfill my ultimate purpose I just let go entirely and was like I'm going to I'm going to have fun and I'm going to like do what I feel like doing on a day-to-day basis and I would listen to what you would call like the Sha you know the the inside of inside part of me that I had been kind of like caging up and saying like you know repressing and it would say you know go to this movie or walk to this point in San Francisco or go you know like random stuff and that was like very generative for me in a way that led me down like a whole string of events that I never would have predicted to where I am today where I'm really grateful and then it's interesting I feel it somewhat happening again where I'm like I know there's there's like a next um version of what I'm supposed to be doing and I feel a little trapped in some some of these old patterns and Loops um and like trying to get out of that feels like a feels like a challenge but yeah it's not really a question but one thing I can say about that is I just that's one of the things that I have so admired about you always I I never had the courage to just consult my shadow and do something you really have that courage to just go with whatever it tells you and let it lead you wherever it wants to take you and I think that that courage doesn't guarantee that you get what you want yeah but it really pays off in terms of just the level of satisfaction you have in life because a life that's lived courageously is more satisfying than one that isn't I think so too and it's interesting some some of these like self-help authors that talk about like doing the same thing every day or whatever I'm look at them and their life and I'm like you ended up kind of in like a mid tier of success right like Stephen pressfield's like a great writer and I actually love his book so I don't want to pick on him but like you don't I don't know they're like you know he wrote the that the war of art or whatever so you just sit down and it's a great book but like he's not the best writer the best writers are like listening to like these weird Spirits or something and like had really tapped in in a way that like the the mid-tier like more conventional people are are not I remember I read this book I think there's a a book called um God what is it how artists live or life of an artist or something it outlines no no not the I like that book but no there's a book about rituals of of artists I got to find it yeah and it's like like and and it talks about and it's what I always found interesting is there's like no pattern like there's one mathematician who slept for like 16 hours a day W and like I don't and like shopau like lived with his mom till like he was like really you know he like this this was a bunch of stuff nii was like an incel who like you know and and uh I just I find that very interesting that that that convention in some ways has a limit on how effective it is and then and then in fact you sort of have to like submit to some like higher Spirit life force thing that's just like flowing through you and you have to like tap into it and I feel like the the most successful people I know have tapped into that and have kind of opted out of the convention then but I don't would you agree you work with some of the most successful people in the world the most successful people I treat have only one thing in common and that is they do more before breakfast than the rest of us do in 3 months but see they just take so many action steps by the way they don't all pay off yeah which is they're taking so many I so I generally agree I think that correlates and they're not by the way they're not the deepest people totally those are the most success no I I agree the people I know who are most successful I mean like it's like the Trump style cockroach junk energy or whatever but but I agree with that but uh you have counter examples to that like Jeff Bezos uh gets his day started at like 10:00 a.m. or something right he like talks about he's like I I putter around and drink my coffee till like 10 and maybe was that true maybe that was like a way to throw competitors off and maybe it probably wasn't true right after you left D Shaw to starton or something wondering is what his habits I'm sure there's some you know glossing over of you know just like Warren Buffett's the super apple pie grandpa or whatever he's probably not he's probably pretty sure and I should probably also add a footnote here which is that I'm not sure that it matters that much I'm not sure that we should be studying the richest or the most successful people and using them as templates for for they all feel lost to me too it's wild so it's not these are not people whose mental health I would necessarily you know Envy or want to emulate I agree with that I also think the scapegoating of the ultra rich is stupid and beside the point and like and like a lot of these people are super impressive and I'm glad they exist they've created a lot of value but I but I think they uh yeah I think they are not the Paradigm of happiness or mental health or or or and then are often they don't know what to do with the money exactly which is because they it's this treadmill where you're like it's the hedonic you know I made a billion and then you know then I have to make 10 now if money was the point then eventually you sort of like so what am I just going to accumulate more for the rest of my life totally yeah you can't there's not a whole lot of meaning in that no definitely not there is a lot of influence you can you can have and a lot of things you can do yes but then there are all these like social limitations to that like if you really want to do something meaningful like you know there like regulations and they like so social coordination issues and those are probably harder to solve uh than the M like you know you you can't just throw money at those things right it's like the I don't know whether Elon Musk is going to succeed with Twitter but I think he's learning now that it's it's not just like you know you can't just um feature your way out it's not a technocratic solution maybe you have to do something interesting culturally there or something I don't know I mean he's definitely also has this Relentless cockroach energy or whatever but uh no I I admire I think he's awesome but but I just think that's a great description doesn't die I mean like think about his career isra his SpaceX I think the first launch attempt was 2006 and um they failed three times either two times or three times so either on the third or fourth attempt they they succeeded and they were if that if that that had blown up the whole thing would have failed and now it's like over hundred billion dollar company but it would have it would have been over for him and he sank all of his own money into that company and then Tesla when they went public everybody shorted it and everybody hated on him he's fought a lot of yeah yeah he's fought against a lot of headwinds super impressive I get the vibe that his I remember I read his um biography by this guy Ashley Vance and like he was his dad was abusive and he just took so much like um beating as a kid and that you get the vibe that like his pain tolerance was just like way higher than anybody else's even by the time he started his first company which was called zip 2 which is like a a white pages online which you know yeah that's interesting he does have the quality of a person who learned early on to just be impervious yeah impervious to anything that was coming at him yeah and it's interesting too cuz he's I think he's a combo of like hyper sensitive and impervious right which is which is really wild like he's tapped into some sort of mystical thing and then he's also like super tough and like just will not stop and like you know can get beaten over the head by but I think like um I was actually talking to a SpaceX employee like a week ago and he was like I joined SpaceX cuz I saw Elon Musk get very emotional when Neil Armstrong criticized SpaceX because that was his hero he was like he wanted to like recreate the Space Program privately and like reboot it and SpaceX done an amazing job it's a a really impressive company in like you know in a kind of hand wavy way Neil Armstrong just dismissed it and so my my friend was like that humanized him for me they inspired you to do this didn't they yes and to see them casting stones in your direction it's difficult well you were just talking about how you think Humanity we were discussing Graham Hancock the last guest I had on the show and you said that you agreed that Humanity goes back way longer than we think it it might have so why do you think that I'm just a blind follow of R Steiner that's so that's what he says so but you know if you look at the the history of this I was I don't know what the I'm not an anthropologist or anything but it seems like maybe every 30 years they say the Earth is older than what they thought they they never and I've never heard anybody really say hey isn't this weird we underestimated every [ __ ] time I don't understand how that works yeah so why are you a blind follower of Rudolph Steiner I was just kidding but I I I I found him to be very his predictions I found to be very accurate and also besides being accurate they make sense you know he he looks at the he looks at life in history as a uh almost not rational that's not the right word but as a connected um set of events all of which um all of which connect to his his view of the world in an abstract sense like you want me to go into this yeah let's do it so like why don't we set up for the audience who he is so he was uh turn of the century uh Austrian philosopher who kind of came out of the theosophical world but uh created an offshoot called anthroposophy and the whole idea is sort of spiritual science and so empirical inquiry into sort of spiritual or formally thought of as purely psychological phenomena and he was also the father of organic farming so he was clearly sort of rigorous in a you know kind of skeptical scientific sense as well yeah what he said I think was right he he was the first one to really actively apply the the vision of Science and the idea of cause and effect and the idea of experimentalism he actually did that the the thing is most of the um let's say information is not provable because the experi it's not like well this thing fell three feet and we can use the law of gravity it didn't it didn't work like that CU everything was internal so you had to believe you had to accept what he was telling you because there was no physical evidence but that's the whole point the whole idea of what he was doing is you can have evidence and the evidence can be tested but it had it's it's all internal but he would say you you can um intern Ally test out some of the stuff and it may not work out why why do you think Steiner or how does Steiner break down uh human nature in a kind of a more uh precise or interesting way than other people I think what really um separates Steiner from the rest of the pack is that he takes a psychological view of the human being but he embeds it in a larger epistemology that includes spiritual forces that are surrounding the human being and he's the only the only philosopher SL you know psychologist that I've ever studied that really studies the interplay between the spirits surrounding us and the and what goes on you know internally he was very fascinated with bees he he considered a beehive as one organism not it's not a conglomeration of you know a thousand bees the bees are all at at one together they look like a single super organism it really does make them appear as one and uh it had something to do with the Queen B and he compared it to the Wasps with the WASP every little waspish thing was separate and had a life of its own so the be the bees became a model for exactly what we don't have now which is a holistic connected almost organ organ organistic um model for really for everything I think like 110 years ago or something he was born 1860 the guy says there's going to be two things in aund in in a 100 years so about now they going to be two things that will be very difficult bordering on the impossible one UC ation he said it'll be almost impossible to really educate kids and two it' be very hard to have strong leaders you have pseudo strong leaders but that's not the same thing but it's very hard for him in his eyes it would be very hard to have really strong and the the reason for both of those things is narcissism is going to get so out of control and everybody's me me me me me and no one will listen to anybody else yeah and 100% it's right I read this article once where where this is only a moment in time but um the the um what was I think it was Penn was doing an analysis on on what graduate what type of graduate school what subject that kids when they graduated from undergrad and 60% of them said they wanted to be investment bankers yeah think about that yeah well there's something about the Baby Boomers where they they realized that there was there were a lot of scraps to go around and they could sort of pick at the scraps and that became the model of success for younger generations and it it's just horrible like the whole reason we're here is because of uh uh an industrial base and a sense of sort of industriousness and and and hard work and and value creation for other people and then you when value extraction becomes the model model I think you know it's a pretty dark place to be in that that creates a sense of unfairness in the thing and that this is the mediocre Road anyway see this kind of stuff hurts people that are that whose goals are prosaic and basically what they want is security Now now the other guy so and that I call that the power system it's like a beat it's like a you know like on the grass somebody walks along a certain track that everybody follows so that's like uh go to go to Brown go to Harvard Law School join this Law Firm I mean it's an extreme example but it it creates an elite um that thinks it knows something and that that group of PE you can see when everybody was paying to get their kids into private school yeah they didn't think there was anything wrong with that it didn't even occur to them no it feels like the modern quote unquote Elites are just preing on a kind of an over financialization and a loss in any intrinsic value in sort of Labor and basic hard work correct and uh it's it's really horrible and uh you know if you're a true capitalist which you know I don't think capitalism is a perfect system but I loved it I like it better than Marxism then I I think this needs to we need to P re this in and if we don't I think we're we're in big big trouble actually KL Mars wrote before he wrote The Communist Manifesto which I think was 1848 he wrote a book um called his economic and philosophic manuscripts and he talks about uh all this stuff he talks about alienation um but also the idea that uh animal life activity is basically all around subsistence it's around food survival and shelter and there's something about the modern capitalist system which the same literally the exact same and everything that's sort of unique about the human being which is that we're self-referential we can write poetry and create beautiful kind of aesthetic Beauty uh is kind of shot immediately by this and so you you combine that with a the idea that you can't actually move up and that the game is rigged and you end up in a really bad Revolution and and you know on top of that people don't seem to understand economics at all and that seems to be like the most important issue you have all these other hot button issues that are basically distractions we're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic or something so but let me tell you about Carl marks well let me tell about R Steiner R Steiner said I think it was 1840 I don't know um Carl Marx was in the British museum I don't know why he he goes every day to write and rud ster says the devil would was dictating to him what to put in these books especially you know do copy to whatever it was yeah um so listen very carefully to this he he understood the creation of of value through work however he couldn't he he thought this is something I another thing I have so much uh whatever the [ __ ] I have about it I don't believe in self-regulation at all self-regulation says the the the the failing will be automatically and almost mindlessly corrected um because it's a self-regulating system the only problem with that is there aren't any self-regulating systems so he Carl Marx thought once he had explained to the workers so to speak what was actually going on they would would automatically correct it that's self-regulation but there's no such thing as that so once the concept came out of of the uh how we're going to describe it as as the value of Labor what really happened was the bad guys said oh [ __ ] here here's some real value we're going to slurp it up yeah well it's always the most altruistic seeming philosophies are the most evil because it seems like you can implement M them at Mass scale so there's something about utilitarianism and then Marxism as well where Marx Marx was so diagnostically hard-headed in terms of the current situation and then in his prognostication of what would happen which is that yeah the workers would Rebel and take over the state and the means of production and then everything would somehow dissolve that's literally as Fantastical as it gets and and completely Cuts against you know any basic understanding of human nature yeah so to go back to something you said a long time ago the the um the the acid test the standard for any idea any ideology has to be it has to have a plan where it recognizes human evil and has some set of metri not metrics some set of mechanisms to deal with that if you think it's just going to happen by yourself you're nuts what there's something about the human being that's both ultimately very depraved and animall likee and then also kind of divine and inspired what's your sort of model of of of humans I I my model I would I would agree with that there's a lower and a higher part but the key thing is is not the the okay so so this is naiv this is murderous selfishness but the the key is up here which is basically Free Will PR practiced all the time so I don't agree that that's all a human being is that that's um that that's what R rudu says evil is bipolar in other words this what he calls aromatic evil and then um luciferic e luciferic evil is very like uh performance oriented manic self-referential a good time until he crashes that's that's the um and anyway that's the one poll the other poll it was just called which is called aromantic that's luciferic aromantic it's like the polit bureau it's like a it's like a one of those offices with all accountants in there yeah and there's a dullness to the think bureaucratic Tyran something so those are the two polarities what what he calls Christ as the third figure but you you can have an operational uh version of Christ he was Jewish so you could maybe pick a Jewish name for yourself um but the point of it is there's the the third factor it's why you know in the actually in the old and new but mostly in the New Testament there were there would be Illusions to the number three what I didn't say anything oh okay the Illusions to the number well he died at the age of 33 right rud of siner no Christ oh yes he did yeah um I always find it interesting these things whether you believe they happened or they didn't happen just this the symbology of it is is fascinating do you think Christ has sort of a symbolic or metaphorical bloodline and that um um in kind of a neoplatonic sense other people can reach that State of Consciousness and that he's more kind of symbolic and maybe even Pagan Traditions prior to Christ had you know versions of Christ that Christianity sort of shorted up in some way here's what he says it's very interesting he said we like to think of Christ as a great teacher he said he wasn't a teacher at all that's a misunderstanding because if I'm teaching you something I'm in a distance do this do that buy these cookies he says Christ was how does he put it Christ was a man of action basically is what he says and the the the idea of crucifixion was an action and again talking about this thing about freely will he didn't have to in a karmic sense he didn't have to go through the through the crucifixion um but it it had to do with the karma of it's not like Christ forgives all your sins that's [ __ ] but what he does what he does what's the word uh forgive yeah but but he he does forgive the karma of the whole human race which is a very different thing one is an individual one is is everything and um by doing that he he became he was he was in the middle between the two the two polarities this you know if you go to uh basil you know where basil is it's like in the it's like in Western uh is it yes it's it's in Western Switzerland Switzerland yeah uh so there's like a rud Steiner like a museum or something and and there's a sculpt SC a wooden sculptor that he did himself sculpture that he did himself and in it he has AR aramon which is the one pole and Lucifer which is the other pole and he Christ is just there in the middle and he's killing both of them he's not he's not doing anything it's just they they need he basically he was keeping them from interacting with each other and that's a good thing for you to learn about hey you know my lawyer's coming over here maybe you can interview him too he's deep into all this stuff is he deep what do you think are my biggest strengths and weaknesses and um how should I best spend my time in 2023 well your greatest strengths are your unbelievably intelligent um I mean just beyond beyond um no really I don't think I don't know if that's true well it's true but anyway your your mind is like is unlike any I've ever seen before it's in incredibly powerful um you got to expand your circle I know a lot of really smart people um no there's very few people who have the um breadth of knowledge that you have and the incisive ability to think rationally as as you do and that's to me that's like the masculine you know where your weak is on the feminine yeah has to do with emotion tenderness um um a sense of the Aesthetics I think you have it I have a sense of the Aesthetics you have it yeah it's the emotion in tenderness you're right yeah it doesn't it's like you haven't allowed that part of you to flourish and it probably feels a little threatening because it's not as you know int with intellect you can Master things yes this other feminine side isn't about Mastery no I have trouble being taken care of or like receiving love or gifts or stuff like that so yeah it's interesting like I I yeah I think you're right and then what what do you think is the yeah how should I um best spend my time in 2023 how should you best spend your time how do how do you mean I mean do you want to narrow that down a little um what should I work on and and uh what what should it be about and maybe the working on you know some quality involves like travel or staying here or you know I don't know I think I've told you this before but um I've never said it on camera so you can say it on camera right um I think your best use of time is to conjure up an image of the most vulnerable side of you yeah that is the part that's capable of awe and reverence yeah um it is the counter masculine you know side of you and make it a goal to develop a as strong a relationship as you possibly can with that side of your personality developing a relationship includes talking to it every day it includes letting it letting it make decisions for you not all the time but at least from time to time you know kind of thing um and it means seizing a hold of the moments where you feel vulnerable and instead of like pushing them away yeah go for it go into it totally I you know it's something I'm find interesting too is I think your your body knows often better than your mind does like what's good for you and bad for you like I think for a long time I was not in touch with like how I felt about certain situations and I would like override the way I I felt on a visceral level to like make a business deal happen or because I was supposed to show up at a thing or whatever but there's something too like like it's like re you know reflexology this like muscle testing like it's like you put like a vitamin you know you take a vitamin then you test what how strong you are whatever like I think that's there's actually something to that and I don't think we understand the causal mechanism I think there's something like that around life too where like you feel strong you're like this feels really good for me and then other things you're like this really feels weak and I feel like I'm being attacked and I don't know why and I feel like I'm tensing up it's like oh cuz that person's kind of repressed and acting weird but like you the thing Artic your body articulates it before you even do kind of intellectually understand that yeah absolutely it's like when I walk into a situation and suddenly feel myself tensing it's like my body is sensing something in the room that I'm not even aware of yeah you know the energy is kind of off or something but yeah yeah it's interesting I guess what sorry I just flashed on probably my worst memory of that was going on Dr Oz on Dr Oz yeah it was just like you were like freaked out I don't belong here well it's kind of awkward it's like get me out on on those show I think those shows like Joe Rogan talks about this he's like those shows where it's like you have this like five minute like prepackaged like we're going to walk over here now and you're going to say like one sentence or like you know the night talk show things where it's like the producers talk to you ahead of time and like give you like four stories that they're going to touch on right they're so [ __ ] lame and like not real or extemporaneous and now that you have like podcasting which is more real like people don't really want that [ __ ] anymore and why would they it's so canned it's so canned yeah it's just dumb yeah it's very uncomfortable as an interview we also because of course cuz you there's nothing natural about it no you can't just be cool in yourself and yeah and I think it's gotten worse too like you know you watch like um Johnny Carson or or who dick Cavit or whatever Cav was great they just seemed a little more natural and then the guys now are like I'm sure they're walking on eggshells you know times 10 because of the PC culture we live in or whatever so maybe it's that but it feels like it's gotten worse as podcasting and other sort of longer form better formats right have you know grown but I don't know so uncomfortable I agree I agree but I I think it's interesting I mean I think media in many ways is transforming itself and the old thing's dying like you you watch these news anchors and it's like what are you talking about you don't believe anything you're [ __ ] saying you got the voice though that's yeah well it's like it's like they they they're no one you don't talk like that that's not normal right and person talk to me like that in a normal situ be like [ __ ] off you know get get out of here with that BS yeah and it's just artificially combative and then and it's it's just annoying right but we I think we live in a wild time where um the one great thing about the internet is that it has opened all of that up it's sort of like anybody can anybody can interview anybody you know anywhere totally and it can be the most natural thing in the world and you can make money off of it and you know outside of a lot of these platforms censoring you based on Purely arbitrary reasons cuz some bureaucrat like flagged your thing for God Knows Why outside of that it's amazing it's so empowering that you can just do that you just start your own thing you don't have to have crazy overhead it's really more about the substance you don't have to like spend a ton of money it's really come a long way I remember when I was in high school I sort of led a drive to eliminate corporal punishment yeah um you know in in junior high and High School in those days if you did something wrong they could take you into the boy vice principal or whatever and have you drop your pants and they would SWAT you with a literally with a paddle and I tried to do it and I think back and I think God if I could had a YouTube channel I mean I could have reached so many the hardest thing was just to get the message out yeah yeah it was crazy no now you can really get anything out it's funny I I uh last year was like considering maybe working on like a more official like UFO disclosure project like documentary MH and then I came to the conclusion like you know I liked some of the people attached to it and I wasn't as much of a fan as some of the other people and I was like I could just do what I want on my own terms and I don't know maybe as much as they do but like I can figure certain stuff out I can get I have good access and I can get interviews with some of these amazing people so like why don't I just [ __ ] do it and like I don't need to like you know spend ton you don't need to spend all this overhead and then you have all these people taking massive fees right it's stupid just create just make the thing like and I think like the lower latency you know the just creating something quickly like there's value in that obviously there are great URS who put YouTube to shame you know in their in their works but um I think even they often started you know look at Stanley kubric That Guy taught himself how to or I was just watching a documentary and Richard link later and he's like I went to the Stanley kubri fil uh film school I taught myself I just picked up a camera I think there's a lot of value in in that and then and having creative control at the start right at the jump and then that um you know sort of uh turns into your skills grow and and then you got you find ansers come to you but it's on your terms you know that's amazing it's great I yeah I don't know well I'm proud you courage to do it thank you yeah well it took courage to for me to not like I always can start new things that's easy for me what's really hard for me is like putting myself out there like that that was really felt really cringeworthy to be honest I hate social media I didn't have social media until a year ago or whatever and um listen I'll tell you something you cannot cannot under any circumstances fulfill your potential without doing cringeworthy things I fully agree you just have to you got to just go for it yeah yeah and in the beginning it was like so embarrassing I was like what am I doing and it even I look back on it and like some of the stuff was actually embarrassing like it wasn't really like the perfect reflection of me but I think you have to go through that phase I think Ira Glass is like a really good quote about this but it's like when you see like an early artist you can you pick up that like there's like a a a germ or like a kernel of like real truth and you have to like carve that out of the marble that is and that that takes just doing the thing over and over again um but in the beginning you kind of you get a little little glimmers of like okay there's some magic here but like the person's just really not that good and then yeah I don't know I if you just more you do it that goes back to the Shadow by the way which is what what is ultimately cringeworthy about certain things is that you're revealing part of yourself that you've never really revealed before and that's one of the reasons why it's so fulfilling in the long run actually even regardless of whether you succeed or fail because by revealing these parts of yourself you accept them yes and then the the part that I struggle with is like there are ways in which I can make the show or whatever way more vulnerable actually and more less about like heady ideas and more about like myself and whatever but then I I sort of hate the garden variety you know Millennial narcissist just like it's so hard and this has happened and that it's like shut up your life is good you know my life's very good like I'm very grateful for a lot of it even though I I go through a lot back to a part of the discussion we had earlier which is for you reaching that level of vulnerability regardless of whatever judgments you have yeah that's an unequivocal good so you think I should make it more vulnerable yeah you're probably right but then I'm like you know I don't I just don't want to be like cuz like there's days where like I you know I have hard days but I do I go he like I'm guys I'm struggling you know it's like sh shut up I don't know there I don't want I don't want to say that well I'll tell you what just as an interim step yeah record it yeah and don't put it out okay but just record it and see yeah what is the vulnerable part of you feel like when it's given a venue when it's given a microphone it's given a chance to speak does it really actually feel cringeworthy or does it actually feel like that was a relief to get that off my chest totally well you brought up the artist way uh who wrote that book Julia Cameron yeah and I used to do like the morning Pages you know like the vomit drafts of like just what's on your mind and that there's a way in which do doing that gets you into a flow CU you're just like yeah you're accessing like the truest part of yourself yeah and then you're getting your ego out 100% And I noticed with the show and stuff it's not the breaking down of abstract Concepts that like other people already know it's like the expressing my take on it is the thing that people like 100% and um and that's what people want people don't watch like uh Joe Rogan or any people don't watch any show for the content they watch to see the uh person's reaction to or how they open up or deal with the thing and it's really it's almost a cult the personality it's like they want cuz the stuff all these podcasts have the same people on so why do you listen to like a a person one person exploring that and not the other there's something about them right and their their openness to it and their you know interviewing style or whatever you're watching somebody sort of Skate On The Edge you know yeah in your case it's skating on the edge of vulnerability yeah and the better you get at skating on that edge and sometimes going over the edge you know the the the more fulfilling it'll be for you that's the main thing but also I think the more popular it'll be totally well be being vulnerable I guess where I where I feel kind of hopeless is like I don't want to be like a personal content creator for the rest of my life like I do want to make an impact and like having like a million subscribers on YouTube which I think is very possible for our Channel isn't that exciting to me I I really want to like change uh Society for the better and like uh uh expose them to really cool ideas and bring in wacky interesting thinkers and inventors and people who can like push things forward and you know maybe invest in them and maybe you know create a center around this or something and so I guess being vulnerable is like I I I sometimes look at where I am now and like that and I'm like I don't know how I get there or what that looks like and I I honestly feel a little burned out from all the work I've done on other things in the past where I'm like I just don't feel like I'm in the right head space to do it now think about La which is the probably the place I'd want to set this up and I'm like it just feels like the some of the worst people and culture and the worst people get attention here and so I'm like how I'm going to how am I going to pull that off you know what I tell my patients is um take your Shadow which in your case is the most vulnerable part of you and give it a venue every day regularly consist by the end of it you should feel as if you've exposed yourself in a way that does not feel good and just do that every day for six months or so see what happens I with you I guarantee you number one it's going to feel good number two I mean it'll feel scary as all hell in but it'll feel good eventually and number two people will really it'll really appeal to people awes people will love that well thank I I feel more and more drawn to like um doing kind of like a Hunter S Thompson style um traveling across the US and like seeing strange out there things and documenting them fascinating yeah I think it'd be good for both me and then also good to expose for other people or whatever and oh that would be fascinating I want to do more of that I'm I'm going to do a mini version of it I think coming up going to a couple places but then I think I might want to take a road trip and uh yeah just see like people would love that it be like a travel log but a deeper a little deeper yeah like you know like we're traveling across the country but we're also traveling the landscape of your soul oh that that's a good [Laughter] pitch cool is there anything else you want to talk about no this has been great yeah good at this I don't know if I'm good at the thank you I think I think it'll be good I think we can cut together some really cool stuff yeah good I can I never tell how I'm coming across no you were awesome yeah it was really cool and it was natural and you know which I like I don't like the yeah yeah yeah like that Charlie Rose interview you guys God oh my God he was such an [ __ ] he was an [ __ ] yeah not only that you know why was he an [ __ ] oh he got kind of uncomfortable when you guys gave him therapy or something yeah he would not go there at all that's okay I I don't usually expect people to go there but um no the thing that really bugged me about it was that what what he was most interested in yeah was that you had been an intern there and he was in the middle of being sued by a bunch of interns for some sort of sexual harassment thing well he ended up getting me too and he wanted your name and number to so that he could contact you really and you would absolve him you know you would say I didn't see anything like that when I was I didn't know that he wanted my contact so he could yeah I didn't know that because I I came with you guys to The Green Room and stuff and yeah yeah it just was sleazy there was something sleazy yeah he was a sleazy guy I mean he was he was one of the best interviewers in my opinion just not an objective basis of all time without question and I I feel grateful cuz I you know maybe I I do think I want to do a lot more interviewing for the rest of my life experience really cool experience really awesome it was amazing I mean I cuz I would my job was to like um you know tend to people's needs in the green room right and that green room was like it was like I would be stuck in a room with Henry Kissinger for an hour literally that's a real example like he was like Henry Kissinger uh Charlie Rose was late for Henry and uh I remember he was like on the phone with his like assistant and he was like sloppiness like we know he's always late like why am I and then and then he started Kissinger started asking me about Arab migration patter he was like you studied history I go yeah and then he starts asking me about Arab migration patterns in like the 12th century as if like some history you know history major encapsulates like it's like you have to know that and it was like something about like the formation of the Ottoman Empire or something and I was like it was interesting it was wild and I asked him a bunch of questions too about you know mid-century foreign policy stuff it was wild but like that's priceless I [ __ ] I could never despite him Pro probably being a kind of evil um figure yeah he was a dark figure that's great he kind of had like a he was a dark figure he was when I was at Harvard he and this other Professor Stanley Hoffman Stanley Hoffman yeah yeah were the sort of like the two luminaries of the history department and and Kissinger was the dark dark force and Hoffman was like this force of light and not not necessarily like innocent optimism or anything but just he was so friendly and so nice and such a great guy to learn from you just you it was one of the few classes where I wanted to go to class cuz I loved hearing him speak you know kind of thing and Kissinger was the darkest figure he was a he was a power hungry dude yeah and he I don't love what he's done with clearly with China cuz he obviously takes credit for the Ceno Soviet split in 1973 and the you know pingpong diplomacy or whatever and I think he's been a big advocate for investment in China and he wrote that book on China and I think I think he's funded a little by China and and China the CCP is not a good regime uh especially right now no it's terrible it's terrible and I think that he's uh kind of is he an apologist for this I think so yeah and I think he's uh yeah he's become a little bit of a mouthpiece for them and that that's kind of sad to me and you could you could honestly say that in many ways that was a huge foreign policy blunder like like I'm I'm a opening the door to China yeah because here's a telling story actually his foreign minister Xiao Edline mhm uh was speaking with one of Kissinger's emissaries who had gone to China before Kissinger actually showed up and uh they're talking and he goes uh America is the ba uh to Xiao says this to um the the American Diplomat and the American Diplomat the the translator says oh America is the is the you know preeminent power that's what B is supposed to mean in fact ba is a reference to the Waring States period which was you know I think it was like 4th Century BC to 2 Century ad and you had like a bunch of these sort of fous regimes in China kind of rising and falling constantly and that was when you had Sun Su you know writing all philosophy of war and stuff and uh ba actually was the current hegemon that was bound to fall because it sort of overstay it's it's it's welcome and was like too predatory right and and there's like there there's a guy named Michael Pillsbury who WR who wrote a whole book called the the hundred-year um uh marathon and it's all about this sort of double speak that runs throughout uh us China relations where China's kind of you know it's all the sun to using our Force against us enriching itself um by using the us whether it be Goldman Sachs iping their companies or you know attracting foreign investment or you know whatever and then um sort of in a tongue-and-cheek way actually insulting the us or like or like showing that it actually longterm would love the US to fall right of course and I and I think that's been the story of a lot of you know and it's something that Trump as bad as he was was instinctively right on right and and and it ended up in the Super incoherent always more suspicious in a way that where he was right and maybe it took actually that kind of Queen's you know street style uh business quality to like to actually pick up on what was going on and like the neoliberals really got it wrong in many way do you think is there something about the way the Western World lives that is do you think the Western World in some ways is committing suicide or or kind of burning up you know you had all these gestal big history thinkers who were kind of into esotericism like you know Oswald Spangler or Renee Ganan or julus saola people like that who all said you know the West is inevitably going to decline you know in in in the coming few hundred years you know I don't know I think about like people in La for example and they you know they all seem to have anxiety and they talk about their microbiome or whatever you go to like an UNC contacted tribe in Papa New Guinea and they probably have great microbiomes but they never talk about it they none of them probably suffer from existential angst and so what do you think is going on and how does this can this transmute into something positive in the future it definitely can um but everybody's got to face death and feel it in their guts first be before they can otherwise it's not credible what they have to do but um this is exactly where you get into the tools in other words the purpose of the tools is not to tell you the universe is this way or that way the purpose of the tools is to is to take adversity take obstacles even just your thought processes are [ __ ] up whatever it is and um try to transcend them and get get something out of them if someone's feeling um really hopeless and like they just don't know what to do like they like they see no future what would be the first thing and obviously it can't be one siiz fits all but if you were to give out some generic advice for a category of people like that you know it really depends on their circumstances if they're feeling hopeless about something specific um maybe a project that they got heavily invested in that doesn't seem to be going well or whatever then what I would want to do is give them tools to enable them to let go of the result of the project by the way it might turn out to be positive I'm not saying it's necessarily going to be negative but they're putting too much of their hopes in getting the result that they want and therefore they're feeling hopeless because they don't have any control over the result so there there has to be some procedure for letting go of results and valuing your effort irrespective of results and the tool there is called loss processing you can use it even before you get a result to let go of your investment in the result or you can use it after the result doesn't turn out you know the way you wanted it to to let go and keep moving forward mostly human beings get too invested in getting results they want to get results and that hurts us because we don't try as hard as we can we hedge our bets because we're too afraid of not getting the result that we want and then when we do get the result it it's never as satisfying as you thought it was going to be anyway yeah totally how does somebody truly know themselves on a deeper level so it feels like a lot of modern self-help or therapy is around it's around porting addictions from Bad Things To good things and you feel this sort of crazy void or trauma around being alive or something that's happened to you in your childhood and all you have to do is move it from like drugs and alcohol and you know other ways of pacifying yourself towards Fitness and your you know your job and all these other things but that still feels like it feels like you're doing the thing out of a out of a deep sense of Despair and darkness and and it's sort of you're just moving addictions over so is there is there a a layer you can get to that's lower than that that's you know even even better and more more healthy yes but it's not see this is where it's hard for people to Gras there's a difference between a feta comple um almost object it's it's a solution that will stand for all times versus the the solution is process are you going to look at something as in process which means the it's incumbent on you to move forward without stop or you going to look at it as a final solution there's only one final solution and that's Hitler Jesus Christ so evil evil presents itself like that sure as like an ultimate solution to well yeah any uh you could say that the 20th century was the age of ideologies big ideologies and you could say it was sort of a big reputation referendum on all the ideologies because empirically they all seem to not actually scale and work out which means our whole public conversation is sort of feudal in a sense because it's all about these sort of you go to these like dinner part bgea dinner parties and they're all everybody always say you it's the funniest question so what's the solution you know as if you're going to draw it out on a cocktail napkin and you know come up with some technocratic solution to the our social maladies and it's uh it we need to focus on ourselves and and and on a local level but even that feels somewhat TR as well like you know the whole Jordan Peterson just just make bed or whatever like that that feels sort of lame too so well in those terms it is lame but if you think of it as a metap for for Endless effort then it starts to make more sense so most these guys most people can't extrapolate and jump around and see how all these things fit together there's a certain sort of humble position that I think really helps which is I visualize myself in the basement floor of a gigantic Skys scraper this is one huge corporation all the decisions are made on the top floor I don't even get the elevator access to the top floor I just work on the bottom floor yeah taking a paper stamping it and moving it on to the next desk so the the philosophy is I work here I'm a worker among workers that's it yeah and there's enormous relief in that totally and you don't and you timing is different for everyone you know you just don't know when things are going to finally click and often I look at some of the most successful people or people I admired throughout history and it it took a while for it to click usually if I really admire the person like like it's look at like a Winston Churchill like that guy was like kind of a joke before he like you know assumed the position he he did like I think he was um stationed in Kolkata or something and he he would he would like write letters to his mom about his like you know War experience in in World War I or something and um this might have even been pre pre-World War I but uh it might have been like Colonial um and uh his mom would like kind of embellish them for like the the the local paper or whatever and he had like a stutter and he was this like pale awkward guy I don't know there are a lot of cases like that and uh I think often the more failure precedes success the more durable the success is I like that yeah you sometimes sort of Channel Rudolph Steiner I wanted to know if you can do that around what I should do with the show oh that's interesting the show is a aberration in the game plan of someone who was born very um who was born very ambitious perhaps too ambitiously for his own good this uh this tendency had to be not destroyed it just had to be uh worn down corrected reworked revamped and taking you through everything that by Nature you would find out you would considered to be a loss or a failure but actually it's the it's those events specifically that will give you what you want which is an independent ability to judge uh both facts and suppositions and a pleasure in bringing that to the public you've lost uh your most annoying quality which is a um kind of holier than now attitude and you now you you understand the SE the secret and the secret is you don't know [ __ ] number one and number two um nobody can make these decisions for you so the the pathway is good for the sh now what you really mean to ask me is what's the future of the show in terms of in cultural and spiritual impact or power and the answer to that is if you continue to work as you have to uh weaken or even nullify your own ego then the answer to that question will become apparent it'll come come from inside you not through any over conscious uh thought process process so your future is bright if you don't use drugs or alcohol or maybe just use them no I don't want to tell any more jokes all right that's it thank you Phil I appreciate it man all right we come we to come back after dinner and get through the second half of this if you want to do that as much as you want to do I'll do okay that's a zero