Cultish: How I found Jesus at Burning Man, Pt. 2

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Is Protestantism Heresy? Pt. 3 - The Pope | Collision w/ Jeff Durbin

00:00

All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Cultish, Entering the Keen of the Cults. My name's Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co -hosts here.

00:06

I am flying solo today. The Super Sleuth is preoccupied,

00:11

Super Sleuthing on our Super Seeker Project. He's on mission. Not really. We're studying for our series.

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He's researching for our series in Seventh Day Adventism that is pending. We're having him solely focused on that.

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But I'm here flying solo with Will Spencer. Good to have you back, man. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? Good. I guess we're waving here.

00:30

Hi, everyone. We're on YouTube. Most of our audience is via podcast.

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But good to have you back, man. In part one, we were kind of chatting. We're kind of going through a timeline from when

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I first met you. When you were at man camp, you burned up your tarot cards. They were self -painted.

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And we were talking about your whole interest in spirituality from the time as a young man in a synagogue, kind of jumping around from modality to modality, a lot of involvement in Burning Man.

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We're going to jump to that further. So carrying off in part one, in part two, you said after 2013

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Burning Man, you started taking an interest in the Kabbalah.

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Tell it, just bring us into that. Yeah. So I had this tattoo with the phrase Tikkun olam, which is a

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Hebrew phrase that means to heal the world. That's how I had always heard it. And my post about the tattoo went viral.

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And someone reached out to me, I think from Europe, somewhere saying, have you heard about the Kabbalah?

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I said, yeah, sort of. I don't know too much about it. He's like, well, you can go to this. You can take this online occultism school and you can study it.

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I'm like, okay, cool. I've never explored that before because I had kind of run, I kind of come to understand as much as I needed to.

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I thought about psychology, Buddhism, Eastern spirituality, the new age, hippies, the whole thing.

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But the occult stuff I'd never actually gotten into. And so I signed up for this online school, which delivered lessons, one lesson per week, a printed lesson that was delivered through the mail.

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And so it was an at home, kind of like a correspondence course. And the correspondence course was about the tarot.

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And so a lot of people have heard of tarot cards and they know them as a fortune telling kind of tool. That's actually, well, according to this online mystery school, which is what they call themselves, tarot cards were not originally invented as a fortune telling school.

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They were invented as a way to protect esoteric knowledge about the Kabbalah from persecution by the

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Catholic church. This is their narrative. So all this mystical occult tradition had to go underground sometime in the 1100s or 1200s or something like that.

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And so that knowledge was encapsulated in the symbolism of the tarot cards, the 22 major keys.

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So by studying the tarot cards and unpacking their symbolism, you can study the Western occult tradition and get to know the

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Kabbalah symbolically versus just reading the text. And I have in front of me a copy of a

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Kingdom of the Occult by the late Dr. Walter Martin, which is really a lot of his lectures put out on print by his daughter,

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Jill Martin. And there is a section in here about the Kabbalah, but just for the sake of time for anyone who's maybe listening for the first time and is asking, you know, people are asking, okay, what's

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Burning Man? And we are kind of finding that a lot of people might ask as well, too. Like the Kabbalah, like they've heard of it in passing, define real quickly what that is for anyone who doesn't know.

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I think the short definition, I would describe the Kabbalah. It seeks to describe the mystical structure of the universe.

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Like how did God, how did God build the universe? What's it actually built out of? What were the operating principles that he constructed reality out of?

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And so the Kabbalah is an attempt to describe that it's ancient Hebrew mysticism. So there's everyone's heard of the

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Torah, which is like the old Testament, right? There's also the Talmud, which is like rabbinic commentary on the old Testament, which is a whole thing.

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And then the Kabbalah is like the mystical dimension of things. So it's, it's, what is the mystical dimensions of reality?

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Let's put it that way. That's what that, that's what that whole study is about. And aren't there a lot of people in Hollywood who are, who that takes a real cultural fascination?

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I mean, I just remember sort of hearing in passing, like people like Madonna, like she is very outspoken about her.

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I think Ray Comfort actually had a book that he used as an evangelistic tool called What Hollywood Really Believes.

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I think in it, he kind of explored what different celebrities, including Madonna believe.

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I think he brought up the Kabbalah, if I'm not mistaken, but he used it as a catalyst to share the gospel. But that is something that is very popular as well, too, just culturally.

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That seems to kind of stick out. Yeah. I mean, you can, you can Google red string bracelet and that's like, that's a

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Kabbalistic kind of thing that you wear the red string bracelet as a source to sort of signal that you study the

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Kabbalah. And so you can find all sorts of celebrities doing that. You can also go to the Good Fight Ministries, YouTube page,

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Joe Schimmel. He has a whole series on the way that Kabbalistic symbolism shows up, particularly in the music industry and music videos and stuff like that.

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The Kabbalistic tree of life as this kind of like diagram that sort of shows how the universe is constructed, like symbolically that's the

05:02

Kabbalistic tree of life. Hey, what's up everyone. Have you ever wanted to get behind the microphone and chat with myself and Andrew, the super sleuth of the show here at Coltish?

05:11

Well, guess what? You get to do exactly that this October, October 27th through the 29th at ReformCon.

05:18

It's going to be a great and awesome live converse. There's going to be a lot of great speakers. So if you want to get behind a microphone with myself and Andrew, the super sleuth of the show, go to reformcon .org.

05:28

Get your tickets right now, October 27th to the 29th, and can't wait to meet you all there and have a great conversation.

05:34

Now back to the episode. Gotcha. And then, so for you personally, when you got into this, like what was appealing to you?

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Cause I mean, at this point, there's a lot of Peter dishes. You kind of stuck your hand into, like many, many, many dishes.

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It kind of like a thing, like a pot, like a Baptist pot luck, right? And where you can just put in a smorgasbord of everything and you kind of have like a food hangover afterwards in the same way you're jumping around doing all these different spiritualities, practices, taking these different psychedelics, these different ayahuasca trips, but then you come across the

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Kabbalah. What was distinct about that? Like, why was that appealing to you? Because the Eastern mysticism is really kind of out there in our culture, right?

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But through Buddhism and Hinduism, the lotus flower, all this symbolism is really present in the new age.

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The Kabbalah is Western occult tradition, Western mysticism, which we don't hear much about.

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And there's reason for that, which we'll get into. There's good reason for that. So because it was a whole new style of mysticism that not only

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I'd never heard of, but that seemed forbidden, that is forbidden in many ways. And again, for good reason,

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I was like, Oh, that's, that's interesting. This is like a sort of like occult, hidden, forbidden knowledge, even better, like a secret knowledge that not a lot of people have.

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Sign me up. Better or worse. Yeah. So what did that look like for you?

06:54

Like, how did you, like, practitioning it? Like when you started looking into it, like practically, how did that, how did that look?

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What did that look like for you? So again, the lessons were delivered. There are printed lessons that were sent to me in the mail.

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So I'd read one lesson per week. And the very, the very first set of lessons is all about visualization and manifesting.

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It's all about manifesting your will, like learning that process of how the mind works. And then the next sets of lessons

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I did, I did three grades. So first grade, second grade, third grade, the first one was about the manifesting that I just mentioned.

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The second grade introduces the tarot cards. And so the tarot cards are, are these densely packed webs of symbols.

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Each card is not just one symbol, but lots of symbols packed together. And so you study each one card per week and understand all the symbolism in the card.

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And then how that symbolism ties to other symbolism, just in the black and white version. And then the next grade, third grade, we actually like two, two, two weeks per card.

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And that's when I hand painted the cards that we burned together. And so that whole process of understanding the depth and the interconnection of symbolism,

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I would read those lessons in the morning when I would wake up and I would meditate on the card for a few minutes to kind of like take it into my mind and sort of ruminate on it, let it unpack itself.

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And, and so it was a, it was a daily, it was a daily practice sometimes for an hour or two every morning. And you're, and again, you're very dedicated.

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I mean, we'll even go, we've only scratched the surface of what you've tapped into. I mean, so far, like at this point in your linear journey, was there points where maybe you're thinking like, man, this is, this is step 17 on the bridge to total freedom.

08:34

Like that's a good question. I mean, I mean, cause I mean it's dedicated. And again, again, there's probably, it's a new practice.

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It seems very exciting, different. It's secret, forbidden knowledge is kind of that's usually the general appeal of whatever you're getting into.

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But there's gotta be a, maybe a little bit of like, okay, am

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I getting there? This is, is this, is this it? Is this it? Or like, but then it's like, this is it.

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Yeah. I mean, I think the, the, the, the mystical world now, cause we're now we're at a new age mysticism, the mystical world, you know, it has this ongoing promise of enlightenment, right?

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Where you, where you finally make it, but it structures things in such a way that each lifetime is a lesson. And so you can go through an infinite number of less lifetimes to earn all the lessons.

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And so it's like, well, this is, might be an important lifetime and then I'll have another one. So I don't know that I ever thought of things as like, okay, this is the ones that's going to do it.

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Plus again, a lot of it is just really organic curiosity. Like when I was a little kid, like this, this hunger to understand the truth, right?

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So there was, there was, like, why do you, like, why do people learn to cook? They learn to cook not because they're going to make one meal that like ends everything.

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They enjoy the process of it. And that was a lot of it for me as I enjoyed the process of it because it was, it was interesting.

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Like I was generally interested in it. So there was a little bit of a spiritual component. This is my practice to improve in this lifetime or send in whatever future lifetime, but also like really curious about that.

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What's going on here? Right. Gotcha. So you're kind of also, maybe you're like the Gordon Ramsey of like, pseudo spirituality.

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I like that. I'm going to take that. Yes. I'll take that. Yes. Like you're, and you're literally playing in Hell's Kitchen. If you want to, if you want to go there.

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For real, for real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's the, really the catalyst, the gap between 2013.

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I'm going to put that on Twitter. 2015. I just thought of it. Now my brain's like wanting to do like a

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Gordon Ramsey impression, but I have to stay on target. We're totally going to lose it. But that was like really the main like focus between 2013 and 2015 was really getting into the

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Kabbalah. Very much so. Very much so. And, and, and like daily practice. So like for, for that two years

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I was studying. Now the Kabbalah, the Western occult tradition isn't just about tarot. It also loops in alchemy and astrology and all these different practices are all, it's like the, the, the, uh, syncretistic at all, at all mesh, it all sort of merges together.

10:58

Yes. I mean, like even like the way you're assembling it, it's kind of like one of those like weird magnetic puzzles.

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Like I remember this, with these, I forget what type of toys they were as a kid, but they were these blocks, but they were magnetic and you could, they weren't necessary puzzle pieces, but you could kind of make your own thing.

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Yeah. That's kind of what it is. Like we just had Angela Ucheon, astrology, astrology. She was great.

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Yeah. And then we had Amber on and like, or Teresa Gentry and all of them have a lot of the same practices that you did, you did.

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Um, but they're just, they syncretize them maybe a little bit differently. Yes. And that's what you do.

11:35

Right. That's what you do. That's a great amount. That's a great analogy because I felt that my study of Western occultism did snap everything into a place and gave it a structure because part of the challenge was

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Eastern mysticism is that we don't, you know, you and my and everyone in America and Europe, we don't grow up in the

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East. Right. So we're not familiar with a lot of Eastern symbols. We have to learn them and their foreign symbols from foreign cultures.

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Western mysticism has Western symbols. So it works better with the culture that we grow up in. Right. And so it was like,

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Oh wow, this is something that's actually like part of me and part of my background. And so I could bolt on all the Eastern tradition stuff and the

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Western occult tradition actually says that it's all the same thing expressed through two different lenses. So it was a way, like you, you nailed it.

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It's a way to start putting all the pieces together in a way that worked for me. And it's so, just real quick, it's fantastically detailed.

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Like there's so many different details that you can get lost in and so much to study. And for a guy like me, that's always trying to put together big ideas.

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It was a world that I could spend endless amount of time in and like never get bored of it. There's always something else to learn cognitively.

12:34

Yeah, for sure. And I think also as we unpack, uh, like your story further, it's important to know too, that while as a whole, the occult a new way of spirituality as a whole is simplistic in the sense that it's one ism versus two ism.

12:48

Yeah. But what you also see is a, it differentiates between culture.

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So when you look at, uh, the occult and, uh, pagan practices when it comes to how it's practiced in India, it differs from, you know, a lot of the, uh, like the

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Buddhist monasteries, or if you even look, if you look at, um, like how it's practiced, like the spirit, the weird, uh, folklore in new

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Orleans versus a lot of the folklore. We had a series, uh, based that was in West Virginia of like a lot of the backwoods occult spirituality is very different in Virginia than it is new

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Orleans. Yes. And that's, and even like generational wise, like we're in our forties, you look at the tick tock generation, you know,

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I, I almost feel like Steve is shimmy, you know, like, Hey, how you doing there? Kids. Let's skateboard in the back. Yeah. I feel like they're trying to cool the inner generation.

13:37

But so you see a lot of that culture, the influencer culture, whatever you want to call it, but now you still, you see them depicting the same pagan practices that you were like you were in, but they're doing it through the lens of something like witch talk or something else as well too.

13:51

Yes. You nailed it. A good example is, um, like Norse paganism. Yeah. So you see these runes, right? These sort of crude stick drawings, right?

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So runes, it's the same thing. It's all the same thing. So you pull up these series of characters, 15, 20 characters, however many, and you use these symbols to, you meditate on them and you use them to focus your conscious, your consciousness to manifest your will.

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It's the same thing. It's all the same thing all over the world. And it's all about the manifestation of your will, not

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God's will, your will. And that's where the things get very sticky and very dangerous. Yeah, I definitely agreed.

14:23

So take us then in a 2015 Burning Man, like that's the last Burning Man that you attended. What was that like and how did it differ from the two previous ones?

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Oh, you're going to love this story. So, so I had used, I had used the tarot cards, which were very much about manifesting.

14:38

I'd use them to change things in my life successfully. Cause I was, I was stuck in a lot of really bad situations and I had used them.

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Now, whether I use them to, to change anything materially in the universe, or I just use them successfully to, to pull myself out of my own muck, let's say like,

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I can't really say, but something about the discipline of doing that helped me change something fundamental at myself. And I made some really big changes in my life that included ending the relationship that I had been in that kept me from going to Burning Man previously.

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That's a whole separate subject conversation. So I ended up going to Burning Man in 2015 and very spontaneously, like I woke up one morning, like, why would

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I ever go to Burning Man? I woke up the next morning. I'm like, I'm going to Burning Man. So because things had changed literally for me overnight,

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I go out to Burning Man and I set up camp with some friends that I just like, Hey, you guys got room for me.

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What are you doing here? Long story. I'll tell you later. And I woke up the following morning and, and I talked to the guy

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I was camping next to. I told him I had just come off a breakup and he said, you know, if you're coming off a breakup, you should go to this camp called

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Spirit Dream. They can, um, they might be able to help you work through some of those things. And this is a camp within the

15:43

Burning Man camp? A camp within the, within the Black Cross City, yeah. Cause he had just come there and he said that he had had a great experience talking with them and, and they, they did some, some healing practices and maybe some dream interpretation.

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And just, so just real quickly, if you do the, the, uh, drone shot view of Burning Man, I just, as we go into that, you'll see, in the, the center point of the

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Burning Man, but you'll see this literal encampment and within it, you have RVs, you have tents, but you also have, you know, bigger tents where there's specific, you know, festivals that you can take place in maybe different clubs, different things.

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So this is an area, you called it, it was a spirit, what was it called? The name of the camp was called Spirit Dream. Spirit Dream. Yeah.

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And so, so the Burning Man festival is organized, like there's the man in the center and then there's a big, uh, semi -circle of, uh, where people are set up and there's, uh, there's streets and avenues.

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So it's like, I'm camp, you would say to somebody, I'm camped at, you know, three o 'clock and B, which says you're at the three o 'clock point and then you're two lanes in from the man.

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So you could, so he sent me to wherever, wherever Spirit Dream, the camp was set up and you just, you have a space that's described for you and however many people and you set up your tents and your big tent there and you can offer services to people.

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It can be as simple as like, you can have a band or a DJ tent or whatever. Or you can have an orgy dome, you know, the whole spectrum is there.

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So I had done a lot of inner healing stuff. He said, well, if you go to Spirit Dream, they do some healing stuff.

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You should go talk to them. I said, okay, that sounds good to me. Like I'm always up here. I am. What else am I going to do today? So I went to Spirit Dream and, uh, they, they had a big board of services, uh, on, and one of them was dream interpretation and, and, uh, you know, uh, various like counseling kind of stuff, talking about your past.

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It's like, okay, cool. I could kind of use some of this cause I'm grieving. So I go in, I go into the camp and I get seated, uh, with three people.

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There's a, there's a, um, a woman in her, in her early forties, a woman in her late fifties and a man in his seventies.

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And I'm sitting there and like, so what brings you in today? I said, well, I'm coming off of a breakup and things are, things are really tough.

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And then I ended up in this three and a half hour long, um, I would call it a healing session with them where I'm just unpacking all of these things from my past related to my childhood and mistaken beliefs and, and, uh, that I had about myself and my parents.

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And there was nothing really mystical about it. It was just being in their kind of loving presence gave me the opportunity to really open up about a lot of things that were really present for me in that moment and really heal a lot of things.

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The woman in her forties, um, her name was Barb and she was talking about what it was like for her being a mother.

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And, and that was really healing for me to get to hear like, you know, how healthy mother treats her son. And then, um, and then the older gentleman there, um,

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GI was his Burning Man name. You get Burning Man names. He helped me, you know, work through a lot of stuff related to, you know, what it means to be a father.

18:33

It was really cathartic. It was really cathartic for me. Um, in a very positive way. Would you say that like this moment when you're, when you're going through all this inside this small section of Burning Camp, this was like a very emotional experience for you, right?

18:48

Very, very emotional. Yeah. I've seen people send us stuff all the time and thankfully we have an assistant, uh,

18:54

Ash, shout out to Ash, her assistant. Love ya. Um, it's been very helpful, but usually I'm lucky if I can check like 10 % of the messages people send us, but people send us crazy stuff all the time.

19:05

Um, some of them have just been like random pieces of footage from like new age retreats where it's like men and women, they're doing something where everyone's around them, their hands are on them and they're crying uncontrollably.

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And there's part of me where it's like, I have to be careful about what I post and even if I posted how

19:23

I structure the conversation, cause it's very easy, especially in clickbait, outrage and outrage porn world where you just want to be angry, you know, with anything that's politically charged right now.

19:34

It's huge where, um, it's very easy for just people like, Oh, they're stupid or they're just people just kind of like mock and deride these people who have this very emotional experience.

19:44

It's easy to do that from afar. I think it is important to realize that you in this moment and many other new wagers that I've talked to more than I'm going to talk to in the future, they are trying, they're see,

19:56

Walter Martin says they're seeking out for help, but they're not finding it from Christ. They're finding it. They're trying to find it from the forces of evil.

20:03

So I think there's a level in which you need to understand the spiritual danger of all these practices, but also understand that our battle is not against flesh and blood.

20:11

Yes. Our battle's not against the people who are experiencing these healings. It's about the principalities and powers that are binding these people trying to find peace in this encampment and really what's taking place is just knowing the nature of what you called it mediumship.

20:27

Well, you might've jumped ahead a little bit. You're not, you're not wrong.

20:33

You're not wrong that there's a lot of that going on. You're not wrong that that a lot of people who go to Burning Man are look, are carrying really intense mental, emotional, psychological burdens, as we all do.

20:44

Right. And, and they, they feel like, um, that they need to heal.

20:50

They need to heal themselves. Right. And, and that it's all about the self. And this is the, this is the entire problem with the new age ideology in particular, which is very, it's very much about the self.

21:00

And we'll talk about this when we get to the Aubrey Marcus and Aaron Rogers interview. It's a lot about me, me, me, living my best life, stepping into my power and all that stuff.

21:07

And so, and so they're not wrong in that they have, they're crying out for help, but where they're wrong in that is that there's something beyond the self.

21:16

There's something beyond this oneness notion of we are all God. There's a, there's a creator in a universe and a story that we participate in that we're blessed to participate in.

21:25

And the real freedom doesn't just come from healing your own inner wounds. You know, it comes from reconciliation with the creator's story and be, and really finding that's where real peace is to be found.

21:36

You can't find true peace. This is what I've discovered, you know, on the back half of the story that I'm, that I want to,

21:42

I want to finish, but the real peace can't ever be found inside the self. Real peace can only be found by coming into reconciliation with reality, with the creator, with accepting, you know,

21:51

God's love and forgiveness. That's where true peace is really found. And that's why people can get, get lost very easily in the new age healing world.

21:59

Yeah. Hey everyone. If you are watching us right now on Apology of Studios YouTube channel, you need to know that cultish would not be possible if it wasn't for this studio.

22:08

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22:18

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22:30

So we thank you all for watching us and now back to the episode. For sure. So again, so going back to your old self pre -Christ, you're in this tent, you're seeking for healing.

22:40

This is a very emotional experience. What happened from there? Well, so, so I'm, I'm looking around the tent now

22:47

I've done, I've done a lot of healing practices before. And when you participate in a lot of these, a lot of these circles,

22:54

I guess you'd say you can look around and say, especially at Burning Man at some of the tents, say like, okay, there's a Shiva statue over there, or there's some psychedelic art, or there's a

23:02

Buddha, you know, where, where they kind of signal what their what their worldview is in various ways.

23:07

Right. It's just decoration, but I'm looking around. I'm not really seeing any of that. And I'm like, what's going on here? So I go through this

23:13

I go through this really powerful experience where I let a lot of things go and, and I wouldn't call it medium.

23:19

I wouldn't call it mediumship at all. It was just real loving, real loving presence and the ability to be accepted.

23:25

And I was dealing with a lot of grief. And so it was a good time to talk things through in a, in a, I guess you might say a counseling kind of way.

23:31

But at the end of this, at the end of this session, the older woman,

23:37

Katie is standing behind me. And she has her hands on either side of her head on my, of my head, standing behind me.

23:43

And she's, she's saying something and I can't make out what she's saying. And my eyes are closed and this is at the end of three and a half hours and my eyes are closed.

23:51

And I have this, I have this vision and in this vision, I'm on this Burning Man street.

23:56

I can see the flags flapping in the wind and dust and tents and stuff like that. And as I'm, as I'm there in this vision, this man walks up to me and he's wearing goggles and I see that the shape of his jaw and the rough shape of his head is his hair.

24:10

I'm like, okay. And then the face seems to insist like, no, look, I'm like, okay, I look and I see the face and it's like, okay, the face registers.

24:17

And then I opened my eyes and Katie says, there's someone I want you to meet. Like, okay. So I follow her to the other side of the tent on the other side of this pillar that I could not have seen the other side of when

24:26

I walked in, I turned past the pillar and I didn't see the opposite side of it. She turns me around, points me up at the pillar and painted on the, painted on the pillar was the face that I had just seen in my vision minus the goggles.

24:38

And it was the Akiane portrait of Christ. And so that was, that was a very powerful moment where I was like,

24:45

I didn't know what to make of any of that, but I've got photos of this. I got down on my knees and I bowed my head in the dirt.

24:51

And, and it was just very, it was very potent for me. And I asked, well, who are you guys? Like we're Christians. We've been running a ministry here for 12 years to show the father's love to people.

25:02

Do you know who, like who they were? Do you remember any other names? I know there are people who do go to the Burning Man specifically to share the gospel.

25:09

Yeah. They're good friends of mine. Yeah. And so, um, again, they're, they're, uh, charismatics is what

25:14

I, is, um, I'm not too familiar with different denominations yet, but they're charismatics and they're based largely, they're, they're, they live all around the country, but they're mostly based out of Coeur d 'Alene,

25:23

Idaho. And, uh, they had been going to Burning Man for 12 years. They had gotten a prophetic word that they needed to make

25:29

Burning Man a mission field. And they had said, really? Cause they, they looked into it. Like why would we go out there? And it's like, no, this is where you need to go.

25:36

And so they went out to Burning Man. And, and, um, what little I understand about, uh, the charismatic position towards evangelism is that's very focused on the

25:44

Holy Spirit. Uh, and, and so, um, very love oriented. And that was what they brought.

25:49

And they happened to speak the right language of love to people like me, who needed to hear it. That was the right approach because repent sin and repentance would not have been, would not have gone over, gone over well.

25:58

Yeah. Or even, well, even too, like I actually just had a conversation this morning with someone who's an active

26:04

Reiki energy healer. And you, you have to like think with tact and yet you would actually hear this too.

26:11

When, if you listen to any of Walter Martin's messages, he always had an ability to speak in his audience, his native tongue.

26:18

And in fact, there's a point where I think he's lecturing on Hari Krishna's and transcendental meditation.

26:25

And he articulates the gospel sin repentance and the experience of forgiveness as the ultimate trip the human soul can take him into that.

26:34

And he does it in such a way to where he speaks in their native tongue. And I think in the, so in the same way, how

26:39

Paul says, as your poets, I've written, you know, we are all children. When he, when you see that talk at Mars Hill, he's using that cultural around them to articulate those things.

26:50

And I'll talk more about that conversation that Reiki healers will too. But that had to be an interesting experience. So this is the first time you're hit, you have this idea.

26:56

They introduce you to the idea of Jesus then. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and so they would have been going for a number of years.

27:03

They would always leave before the big burn on Saturday night because they weren't there to party. You know, there were very strict rules for people coming out there and you know and they were really committed to what they were doing and they were just, they were just there to love up on people.

27:15

And if people asked what they're all about, they would tell them. And if they didn't, they didn't tell them. I just happened to ask. And so they said they were

27:21

Christians. And it was like, I've literally never met Christians like you before in my life. It's like, what is this? That was the biggest thing.

27:26

It wasn't the vision of Christ was important. I can come back to what that ended up doing for me later, but it was seeing them embody these

27:33

Christian values in such a, in such a whole and loving and kind way that welcomed me in.

27:38

That was the culture that I was in. It welcomed me in, in this new way. And I ended up flying to spend

27:43

Christmas with them that that December and to celebrate a real Christmas and to be welcomed in and to go to church with them and have this big feast.

27:53

And they gave me a copy of the NIV Bible that they had all signed as a gift. And it was like, who are like, what kind of Christians are you?

28:01

Because again, I had come from the Bay area where it's like, Christians are like, you don't talk to them. They're the ignorant ones or whatever. You know what

28:07

I mean? But that I didn't experience. And plus I had gone to a Catholic high school, which is, you know, which is its own way of presenting things.

28:13

It was almost like an episode of like Undercover Boss. They're like, uh, except it's undercover Christian. That's exactly what they have been doing.

28:19

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so that's, that's the thing is that, um, Christ found me at Burning Man.

28:25

And that's, that's, that's proof that Christ can go anywhere. Lord over all the heaven and the earth. Like I'm going to show up and I'm going to meet this guy.

28:31

And when I tell people that story, it trips them out. Like maybe they implanted some vision in your head or whatever. It was like, no, like Christ had goggles on in my vision and did not have goggles on, on the painting.

28:41

Right. Probably because it probably wouldn't have been a lot for me to look into Christ's eyes. Like I think that was probably a kindness to me.

28:47

But even this, this, this beginning idea where you understand, okay, this is actually, I have a perception of who Christians are by these people who befriended you at Burning Man and showed you the love of God.

28:57

And they gave you this Bible. That that was maybe a callous to kind of get you thinking about that.

29:02

You still started jumping around in other places still. Yes. Tell us about that.

29:08

What happened after Burning Man 2015? Yeah. So I didn't really know what to do with that vision. But I did file it away and I did keep in touch with that group in Idaho, which we'll come back to.

29:18

But also at Burning Man, I met a guy who introduced me to Ayahuasca. So I came back from the

29:24

Bay area in September of 2015. And I contacted this

29:31

Ayahuasca shaman to sit and do Ayahuasca for the first time in November of 2015. And so that was, that's kind of the two, the split, right?

29:39

And plus I had also decided one of my, one of my lifelong dreams had been to backpack around the world. And one of the things that had come out of that healing session that at Spirit Dream was like, okay,

29:49

I'm really going to do this. And to give you an idea of who I was at the time, like I needed to ask strangers for permission.

29:56

Like, is it okay that I do this? Like this has been my dream for 15 years to travel around the world. And I had to ask them for permission and they're like, you don't have to ask us, but yes.

30:04

Like, cool. So I decided to go and do that. So a bunch came out of that. I was introduced to Christ. I determined that I was going to travel around the world and I got, and I got introduced to Ayahuasca as well, which

30:13

I followed up on when I got back to the Bay area. And so when it comes to, I mean, we're, we're having a conversation too about the different, you, you'd already tried quite a few psychedelics going back when you were in your college years and got introduced into the

30:28

DJ, the underground DJ world, via 1999. And what we talked about in part one, this is a whole new game and you're seeing a whole new game.

30:38

And in fact, and people ask, well, why are we talking? But this is a Christian podcast. Like, why are you talking about Ayahuasca? Like, what's the big deal? Honestly, more about this one way or another, you're going to hear about whether you like it or not.

30:48

Like for example, this is the very first series on the new age and the occult we ever did was a Steven Bancar's in our very premier episodes.

30:56

And him mentioning on the podcast was the first time I'd ever even heard of that. And I had no idea what he was talking about.

31:03

Now, what you'll see is, and again, we'll, we'll get this later on the episode. You're seeing conversations between Aubrey Marcus and Aaron Rogers, who's been the,

31:12

I think it was back -to -back MVPs for the green Bay Packers. And he's now very open to where now even there's controversy on ESPN where they're saying, well, it's, why should he be doing these

31:24

Ayahuasca trips out in the jungle and being like upset and calling him crazy. But then he's going on on Joe Rogan and Aubrey Marcus, and this is becoming a normalized conversation and you can't hide from it.

31:35

You need to learn and understand what these medicinal properties are, how, what they do to you physiologically, but also the spiritual component of it as well, too.

31:47

This is something no matter you can't show, even if you're a mom listening in, you can't shelter your kids from this. You need to, you're going to have to have a conversation.

31:54

This is what this is. That's going to be part of family worship. Honestly, in the future is probably explaining to me like my children,

32:00

I'm going to have to explain to them what Ayahuasca is and like why you shouldn't take it from my perspective.

32:06

But anyways, you were introduced to it. Go ahead. Just tell them into that. Like, what was that like?

32:11

Well, just, just real quick. That's why I'm really excited to have this conversation because, you know, my own natural curiosity through spirituality has, has let me see so many different perspectives and come to understand really what

32:22

Eastern mysticism, the new age, Western occultism and Ayahuasca really are, because I have different frames of reference to understand them because I've gone through so many different, so many different worlds.

32:31

So I traveled through all these worlds and I really do believe that God kept me safe because he needed me to, because there's absolutely no reason that I should be sitting here.

32:41

All the different practices I've done. We haven't even got to some of the stuff that I saw, like the Kumbh Mela Hindu festival, 190 million

32:47

Hindus, you know, bathing in the Ganges river, you know, meditate. We'll talk about that later, but I've seen so many different things.

32:53

And so I'm able to understand that and communicate what they are in a way that you might not hear on Tik Tok, or you might not hear it on Joe Rogan or whatever, to really say, no, this is actually what's going on.

33:02

So that's why I'm excited to have this conversation with you because I can translate it for a Christian audience and for a mainstream audience who will probably be hearing about Burning Man or Ayahuasca or whatever, you know, one way or another.

33:12

So, Right. So before we actually get into the usage, like define everyone what Ayahuasca is, it's a plant, and it's definitely psychoactive for sure.

33:21

Like, just explain it really quickly from your perspective of what it is in case anyone doesn't know. Yeah. So Ayahuasca is two things.

33:27

In the material realm, it's a drink, it's a brew. It's like a tea made of, yeah, exactly.

33:33

It's made of, it's made of a couple of different plants. The Ayahuasca root.

33:38

And I can't believe I remember, I can't remember the other name, but there are two that are mixed together and it contains DMT and you drink it.

33:44

And the Ayahuasca allow, and the other, and the mixture of the two plants together allows you to digest the

33:50

DMT through your stomach when normally your stomach acid would eat it up. So it's basically DMT dimethyltryptamine.

33:55

It's a, it's a very powerful psychoactive chemical. So you drink this brew and it's like drinking a psychedelic.

34:01

That's what it is on the material realm. On the spiritual realm, what Ayahuasca is, you'll hear it referred to as a grandmother spirit.

34:08

It's a disembodied entity, right? That exists in the realm of spirit. And by drinking the brew, this is, this is exactly what it is.

34:15

And, but it's never described in these terms. By drinking the brew, what you are doing is you're giving consent to the spirit, this disembodied spirit to work on your energy body or work on your spirit to heal you, cleanse you.

34:28

It's a purgative. So you'll have people having stories about throwing up and getting diarrhea. It's supposed to take all this stuff out of your body.

34:34

Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly, like they had a very conversation. They've had very been open about them having that sort of experience.

34:41

Yes. So what a lot of people will talk about is you're drinking this physical brew and you're having all the physical symptoms.

34:46

What they don't talk about is that when you drink it and you're having this expanded psychedelic experience, what you're actually doing is you're allowing disembodied spirits, the grandmother spirit of ayahuasca and the other plant helpers to work on your energy body.

34:57

You're giving them permission to work on you. And that's facilitated through a shaman who sits in front of you and sing songs and the vibration of the song, summons the plants to work on your energy body to manifest whatever, whatever desires that you have for yourself and your future.

35:10

That's exactly what it is. In other words, this is like one, if one ism was a beverage, like if I could, you kill me, dude.

35:18

I'm just thinking out loud. Like this is, if I could, like that's literally what that is. I mean, there's no distinction between the drink and the beverage and like the spiritual component to it.

35:31

Right. Almost. It's like if, or if yoga was a beverage, like if I could drink yoga, it would be ayahuasca.

35:38

Bingo. You'll have to tweet that. We've got it. We've got the, anyway, got the chef that, yeah.

35:47

Yeah. We, we got the idea of, I think you're going to reference the Gordon Ramsey. Yeah. Gordon Ramsey. That's it. But in seriousness though, this is something that is incredibly spiritual dangerous given what the word of God says about the dangers of mediumship, the dangers of when you cross over.

36:03

In fact, when I was trying to articulate to this young lady who was a Reiki practitioner this morning, I said, you could be in the

36:10

Russian Ukraine conflict. You could have a humanitarian plane with all these supplies to help feed the hungry, the poor and the needy.

36:20

If you cross over into a no fly zone, regardless of how pure your intentions are, you're in trouble.

36:27

You're going to have MIGs going after you. You're going to have a, you're going to have a bunch of people with Sam's like trying to take you down.

36:34

In the same way, when it comes to the world of the occult, no matter whether it's through any of the modalities, it has the same, it serves the same purpose to access certain forbidden hidden dimensions.

36:45

And you don't have control over what comes over the other side. And that's why you see a commonality between the different stories that people would go through these trips through these experiences of ayahuasca.

36:57

Yes. And it's all very self -centric. Like the reason why you study these things is because you want to improve yourself to live your best life and step into your power.

37:06

That's the purpose of all of it. So the same reason that I study something like the Tarot and the Kabbalah, it's all about self empowerment, right?

37:12

Cause it's ultimately about manifesting your will. It's the same, it's the same with ayahuasca.

37:18

By the way, the leaf that the ayahuasca root is blended with is called chacruna. So the combination, when you say ayahuasca, what you're really talking about is the blend between the ayahuasca, the ayahuasca vine and the chacruna leaf.

37:30

And that's what allows you to digest the DMT. So, these are all about self -improvement, self -fulfillment, which ultimately leads to self -transcendence, self, self, self, self, self, the entire way.

37:42

And so you nailed it, man. That's one of the reasons why I really have such appreciation for you and what you do is you have a real good grasp of all these things because like I had to live 20 years of my life in it, you know, and to understand it from the outside it's tough.

37:54

So yeah, I feel like my experience is that my first introduction to the occult was, well, a couple of things is that I remember being 11 years old, living in Prescott, Arizona.

38:06

My neighbor, I had a neighbor and his name is Ben Fry and he is a kid like, you know, we all have those like kids and classmates who could tell tall tales, right?

38:14

And, but there's certain times where you see the same people and you know, when they're telling the truth, you know, they're not BSing you. My friend

38:21

Ben, I was over at his house and he started telling me about like he had like deer in the headlights. He seemed like really bothered.

38:26

And I was, you know, it's 11 year, even as 11 year old boy, I'm very observant. I'm asking like, Ben, what's, what's the deal, man? Are you okay?

38:31

Like what's going on? And he started telling me about, he's at his friend's house, um, at a sleepover and they are toying around with a

38:38

Ouija board. And he started talking about how his hand was being guided around. He started seeing, uh, really,

38:45

I won't say what the words were in being written all over the wall, not literally, but like, it looked like it was done in human blood and entrails.

38:55

Like, and he was saying like horrific messages. And it was the one time where I knew, it was like,

39:00

I knew he's not telling me the truth. So I remember to this day, I remember seeing commercials of like, you ever seen those eighties

39:07

Ouija board commercials? Like I remember seeing those, my hair was stand on end. Like I had this instinct of like, that is not a good thing.

39:13

Uh, later on when I was studying Mormonism, uh, I learned about Joseph Smith and his use of the occult.

39:19

And I remember reading James White's book, letters to Mormon elder. And that was really the first time in reading, trying to understand

39:25

Christian apologetics to deal with my classmates. That was, uh, the first time

39:30

I had seen Deuteronomy 18 quoted, there should not be any of you who is a medium or all these things are abominational or just paraphrasing it.

39:38

So my observation, in contrast to yours and other people that Andrew and I have spoken with is me kind of walking up, right.

39:47

Even as a kid, you know, you, you go to, you see a fence, this is private property, no trespassing.

39:52

And it's like, I don't think violators will be prosecuted. Violators will be shot on site looking at that sign.

39:59

I'm like, I'm not going to go over there. And so, and I'm the kid running around and you're the kid who ran over that.

40:05

And all of a sudden it's like, yeah, you went by, and it's a contrast. You went into the, you saw it, observe the upside down world, if you want to call it that.

40:13

Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and, um, you know, I think what isn't necessarily obvious is that all this oneness world, all, um, it all ends up in the same spot, which is all is one.

40:23

And it's about your own self -fulfillment. So the way, and this is where Burning Man fits in. Burning Man is about self -expression.

40:29

By expressing yourself, by manifesting your best life, by manifesting your best life and letting everything out and being you, that is the route to self -transcendence ultimately.

40:39

So it's very self, it's very, uh, self, self -fulfilling, self -centered, right? Is what it is, what it's very much about.

40:45

And so the dangerous ideology that comes along with ayahuasca and, and Kabbalism and all this stuff is all very much again, do what thou wilt as being very spiritual in nature.

40:56

And so people go to ayahuasca ceremonies for inner healing in order so that they might live their best life, their best life.

41:02

It's not about, um, it's not necessarily just about what it includes. It's about what it excludes, which is any sort of understanding of God's law that is not permitted.

41:12

In fact, that, that world, which is, which we'll get to why there's so much discussion of the divine feminine is actively about excluding the divine masculine or the father,

41:20

God, the father. It's all about God, the mother. And we'll talk about that to extent. So it's all the same thing. Hey, what's up everyone.

41:26

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42:11

Okay. So then going back to the ayahuasca and given those experimentations, that that became a really huge part of you really looking to really find the fulfillment.

42:22

I think there might be a connection between, you know, those different father wounds, the different traumas you're trying to find healing from in that tenant, the burning man, you're trying to find the tent.

42:32

Now you're trying to find it through this beverage. Yeah. Take us into that. Yeah. So people like ayahuasca because like there's no escape from it.

42:39

Like if you're sitting in a talk therapy, for example, with a therapist, right. And you're not able to verbalize something or afraid to say it.

42:46

You can, you can back out of it or shut down. You take ayahuasca, you're just in it. And so it's a really, and that's why there are increasingly powerful other earth medicines or plant medicines like a bufo alvarius, which is the venom of the

42:59

Sonoran desert toad, which I've also done you. It's this, the Sonoran desert toad. It's creates this venom so that when birds try to eat it, the bird's like, no,

43:06

I don't want that and flies away. So humans, you know, being humans, they take that and they scrape it off and they dry it and they smoke it.

43:11

And I've done that too. And these are, it's also DMT increasingly powerful substances to have a more direct experience, very mystical, very

43:17

Gnostic. Right. And so, um, so I liked ayahuasca because it was like, yeah, give it to me, give it to me straight.

43:24

Like hit me with it. You know what I mean? Like, uh, you know, like, like Neo and the matrix, like, Oh, I know Kung Fu. It was that kind of thing.

43:30

Right. And so those were, so in November of 2015, I had my first three of 15 ayahuasca ceremonies.

43:37

So I had three, one, two, three, a Friday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday night. And then, um, that was a very, that was a very powerful experience getting introduced to like that, that tradition, um, and the different dimensions of it.

43:50

Um, the very, um, you know, very out of the jungle tradition, let's put it that way. And then in, uh, and then in March of 2016, a number of months later,

43:59

I started traveling and I went down to South America first. So fulfilling my dream of traveling around the world, I sold everything

44:05

I owned, but a few boxes that I put in storage, car furniture, all gone. And I had a carry on size backpack and I started traveling.

44:11

And one of the first places I went was South America. And I went down to, uh, I went down not directly, but I ended up in Peru, um, where I had, while I was down there,

44:19

I did a 12, a 12 night ayahuasca retreat. And I did seven ceremonies in 12 nights, seven ceremonies in 12 nights.

44:29

Yeah. So two ceremonies, then a night off, then three ceremonies in a night off. And then two ceremonies. What's what is, what's the typical like gap between ceremonies?

44:40

Like, it sounds like you're saying that this was extra. And what people normally do, what do people normally do in this world?

44:46

Well, most people who talk about ayahuasca will do one, maybe two in their whole lifetime.

44:52

Maybe the people who are like serious about it will do three in a row, right.

44:57

Friday, Saturday, Sunday to do seven, to do seven and 12 nights is like, it's, it's a, it's.

45:05

Why did you do that? That was a, was it, was a bragging rights or is it did, I know this world going back to the lady

45:10

I spoke with this morning, I look with her in a straight face and I talked to her about the things she had been in contact with the entities.

45:17

And she has a little taken back that even as a Christian, she was maybe expecting me to say, Oh, you're just making that up in your head.

45:25

Like what, like why so many back to back? Like was it just kind of like a narcotic, like out of control, you know, like you think about a person who isn't like an outlet, people are out of control, alcoholic.

45:35

They take one sip of a beer. And next, you know, they're blacked out, not really seeing the photo collage like from the night before.

45:42

Like, why did you do that? It was, it wasn't like that. Thankfully. I'm the sort of guy that signs up to do crazy things.

45:49

And only after signing up to do them realizes that they're crazy. So it was like, so I signed up for that, like, Oh, that sounds fine.

45:55

And then once I actually got on site at the retreat center, I was like, what have I done? Yeah. So it was like a little bit like getting me, getting myself into something, but it's like, okay, well,

46:03

I'm just going to ride this out, you know, and, and, and get as much out of it as I could. And, um, and it was, again, it was, it was a legit experience.

46:12

And with that many ceremonies, that close together, that much back to back and, and being in this jungle based retreat center, no electricity, like all kerosene lanterns and flashlights, you know, very, very back to nature.

46:25

Um, you know, I got the chance to really observe up close, you know, with, with my critical faculty still intact, what was going on, what was actually going on.

46:33

Cause I was, I was able to be, I was able to be reflecting on myself or able to see myself and what

46:38

I was going on rather than being completely lost. And I was able to hold both of that and taking notes in my mind. Like knowing what, you know, now, like how do you observe,

46:47

I mean, and just, I want to make an emphasis is that like, we're kind of, sometimes you talk about, you know, when you think about something silly you did in high school or in, uh, or like in college.

46:59

And I have those stories as well too. You kind of laugh at it as you're sharing a story back and forth. I want to make emphasis that we're not, we're not glorifying like this, like this is a fun, like this is a fun thing.

47:08

It's more like in the spirit of like, I can't believe I actually did that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. How do you view, like now you're in Christ, like how do you view your old self now?

47:21

Like in that, like what do you, like how you view, how do you, cause you, you don't, you don't have a dependency and need for that stuff anymore.

47:29

Um, in fact, you would say, no, I'm not going to touch that because that's a catalyst to get into things that God says don't go there.

47:36

But like knowing what you know now, like how do you view your old self now? So I have to, to answer that,

47:42

I have to view it in context of the rest of my travels, which took place over the next four years. So like I said, you know,

47:47

I did the Bufo Alvarez, you know, a DMT trip, which is a whole, it's a whole thing. I think I sent you, I got my face all beat up from date cause

47:54

I blacked out. That's a whole thing. But I also went to the, like I said, the Kumbh Mela Hindu festival, 190 million

47:59

Hindus, 2019. You can look up the largest gathering in human history. I was there, you know, I did that in India.

48:05

Yeah. That was in Prayagraj, India. So, you know, the guard, the UK paper, the Guardian said it was the largest human gathering ever.

48:12

And, and, you know, it was like, again, 190 million Indians, Hindus and like maybe five white people.

48:18

Right. Right. And so I also did a Buddhist Vipassana retreat in the mountains of Kashmir, literally up in the mountains of like disputed territory, which was 10 hours of meditation a day for 10 days.

48:28

And I sailed the South Pacific. So, you know, from Fiji to Vanuatu to New Caledonia, I did a

48:35

Himalayan mountaineering Institute, which was a mountain climbing school run by the Indian government in the, in the mountains of the

48:40

Himalayas. So I've done a lot of these different things. And so, as I look back, I view that ayahuasca experience in context.

48:47

And I say, I think that, first of all, there's no reason that I should have been brought safely back from any of those.

48:54

Any one of those would be physically, spiritually, emotionally dangerous in any kinds of ways. Right. And so I look back on that.

49:01

And when I, when I got back to, when I got back to the United States, my travels in March, 2020, let me just close the story because it'll help answer your question.

49:10

I kept in touch with the people, with my friends from Idaho. I met a Burning Man Spirit Dream. When I arrived back in the

49:16

United States in February of 2020, just before COVID, Rob, who helped to run the

49:21

Spirit Dream Camp, sent me a book for Christmas, Simply Christian by N .T. Wright.

49:27

And I received that book the day I got back to the United States. And I started reading it as,

49:34

I started reading it as COVID was happening. And one of the things that isn't talked about in the

49:40

Oneness tradition is evil. They don't talk about evil. They don't talk about things that are legitimate. Like we would all agree that Jeffrey Epstein, like the stuff that goes on with Jeffrey Epstein, which is all in the open now it's evil.

49:50

Right. Okay. The New Age won't talk about that because they won't be able to address it because it shatters their whole worldview.

49:56

And we can talk about that separately. But I was at this question because I knew it was real and I couldn't deny it. So suddenly in this book,

50:02

Simply Christian by N .T. Wright, he talks about Christ up on the cross and this giant wave of evil coming to crush him.

50:08

And through his death and sacrifice and resurrection, he drove back this giant wave of evil and overcame evil forever.

50:15

And that's in that book. And when I heard, when I read that, I got it. I got it. I'm like, yes. And then

50:20

I read, and then I read Mere Christianity by C .S. Lewis. And then I read Screwtape Letters. And finally, not only had

50:26

I met these warm and loving and caring and welcoming Christians, you know, I was seeing Christianity. I was described at the time as I was being spoken to about Christianity through these books.

50:35

Like I was an adult. Right. And I was like, these are the answers I've been looking for. Yeah. So I got baptized in, uh, in September, 2020,

50:42

I flew up to Coeur d 'Alene to visit my friends and they baptized me in the Coeur d 'Alene river, which was a beautiful moment for me.

50:47

So that was about two years ago now. So I tell that story because you ask, as I look back on myself, what do

50:54

I think of myself? And what I think happened is that I met Christ at Burning Man in 2015 and he sent me on an adventure.

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He sent me around the world to go experience all these different things and see them with my critical faculties open and my eyes open out of genuine curiosity.

51:10

I wasn't looking to belong. I wasn't looking for an ideology to be a part of. I genuinely wanted to learn. And I always had since I was 12.

51:17

And so he sent me on this adventure. I was kept safe through the whole thing so I could come back, meet him.

51:23

The day I got back to the United States, Simply Christian was put in my hands. I came back and then, you know, several months later, it became clear to me after I was baptized, it felt as if God had said to me, well, you've only ever wanted two things, which was to explore the outer world and to explore the inner world.

51:41

And you have both of those things. And I gave you both of those things and you've come back safe and now serve me.

51:48

Yeah. Yes, Lord, I serve. Right. And you get to, and what's amazing too, is that you always see this duality in the world of the new age.

51:56

There's always this, this conflict, but you literally see that like in theological, like in the person of Christ, you see

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God who's come in the flesh, who's fully God and fully man. So you have, you have just in the person of Christ, you have that pull, you have the full like synchricity that there were, there's no duality.

52:16

But then you also see the full combination of good and evil in Christ and the cross.

52:22

So you see the perfect syncretism there. You see good as far as God and then

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God pouring out his wrath on the son and true evil that took place, both in the Romans and Jews that were conspiring together, but also just in the fact of, yeah, of what took place.

52:39

But then you also have our sin in place for our sin and then

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Christ's righteousness in our place. And so you see all these things where there's, there's duality everywhere else.

52:50

We're in one ism. All of a sudden perfect two ism offers perfect synchronicity and also peace with God.

52:57

Yes. Um, and in some ways I'm trying to speak as much as I can in the new age native tongue if anyone's listening in.

53:04

Uh, so, but yeah, that is so good and that's so encouraging. And then like, what would you say now?

53:10

Like you're new in Christ and this has been like a long track for you.

53:16

Like you kind of, we've only given cliff notes over your resume. I'm sure there's a lot more you can unpack about the

53:21

Hindu festival. If there's anyone who's listening in who maybe they're just curious, maybe they're kind of listening in with their arms folded and like maybe they think, well,

53:31

I've done a one or two ayahuasca trips. They've actually been not that bad. I feel like I have some, this great insight. I'm kind of on this path and maybe you're just, you're off the path or whatever.

53:41

Like what would you say? What would you say to them? Say they're like looking at you still, their arms folded because you've got this resume that you've done.

53:49

Like you haven't done that. Been there, done that. Like what would you say to them? I'll give you some wisdom that my friends at spirit dream gave me.

53:58

And because I asked them about this, I asked them, you know, so much of the new age world is about trauma and inner healing is how does that square with Christianity?

54:06

And what they told me, what Barb told me, shout out Barb, what Barb told me was that in the new age world and they, which they understand very well from being in it firsthand, we say, they say that trauma writes that life writes on us.

54:19

Right. But in the Christian world, they're honest about the fact that we write on life, our sin nature writes on life.

54:27

And the new age world talks about one, but not the other. Right. And so we write on life.

54:32

We have an impact on those around us and we have an impact on ourselves, that sin. And we're all looking for absolution from sin, for forgiveness from other people.

54:42

Self -forgiveness is a big thing that's talked about in the new age world, right? Like, like Aaron Rogers talks about, you know,

54:48

I forgave myself, forgave myself, forgave my parents and all that stuff. But there's also a component of being, we're looking for forgiveness from a source that's so much greater than us.

54:56

And that's what I learned is that looking for forgiveness from God, for some aspect of myself that can never be healed.

55:02

And that's original sin, that we feel that that's, and that's where the new age gets a trap is that if I just keep doing one more modality, one more thing, then

55:10

I'll finally achieve that ultimate forgiveness that I'm looking for from myself and others. And I'll be released. The thing is, is you can't because original sin is part of us.

55:18

The only way that the only way that we can be forgiven from original sin is by God, by accepting Jesus Christ as our

55:24

Lord and Savior. And that peace with God, that forgiveness, that's the true transformative thing. That not only helps heal the trauma, but helps us to stop writing on life.

55:33

And that's what ultimately people are looking for when they want to live their best life. It's not just to manifest what you want.

55:38

You want peace with your environment, your peace with yourself, peace with the universe, peace with God. And that's the thing for someone with their arms folded.

55:46

Yeah. You'll constantly be looking for trauma to heal and forgiveness, but are you, but are you able to accept the magnitude of forgiveness by God?

55:53

Letting that in, that's the true trip. It's, it's, it's something that I literally,

55:59

I thank God. I pray, pray to God, say, thank you. Thank you every night for and every meal for too. Awesome.

56:05

Awesome. Well, let's do this. We've gone quite a bit here. We're going to take a quick break.

56:10

Well, next, we're going to go and cut off right here. We're going to have the next segment. We are going to focus in on these, this podcast recently with Aubrey Marcus and Aaron Rogers.

56:22

I'll tell you what, just on a side note, first of all, man, such a blessing. Thank you for coming on to share your story. If, I never would have expected at the beginning of Cultures, I would be having a whole episode dedicated to talking about an

56:35

NFL quarter, back and his use of a psychotropic plant. I've never even heard of, but here we are.

56:41

Welcome to 2022. So anyways, if you guys enjoy this program, I definitely know what you thought just real quickly. Where can people find you if they want to find out more about you?

56:48

You can find me. I host the Renaissance of Men podcast about the rebirth of masculinity and femininity happening around the world and how inspired that's been and how inspired

56:56

I've been by Christ and Christianity. You can find more about that by going to linktree .com. Excellent.

57:02

Excellent. All right. Well, all that being said, thank you for all for listening in and we'll talk to you next week on Cultish where we enter into the kingdom of the cults.