Cultish: How I Met Jesus at Burning Man, Pt. 1

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen a cultish entering the kingdom of the cults. My name is Jeremiah Roberts one of the co -hosts here

I'm flying solo today. Andrew the super sleuth of the show is sleuthing away at Our working on our project on seven -day adventism

We we just want to have him solely focus on the super sleuthing for that episode. So I'm like in flying solo today

I'm here with Will. It's good to see you, man. It's good to see you too, man. Thanks for having me on Yeah, so I'm gonna jump in Started the very beginning from when

I first met you. It was last January it was For anyone who goes to apology, it's man camp.

Yeah, that's our men's retreat where we go away and do man stuff You know like just eat steaks and and you know, just do all all the all the man stuff

You do it pretty manly stuff actually right and then I'll it was the last evening where we're just hanging around a little bonfire that We had made

I can't talk to you a little bit in passing And I think you had mentioned a couple you had some experiences and some new age stuff.

I didn't know it to what extent You came with some tarot cards. You made yourself.

Yeah, and I painted you had painted yourself and then you Burned them in the fire.

We have we've posted a video a couple times We're gonna you threw it into the fire and you wanted to do that. Yeah, it's gonna have you here now

I want to hear more. I feel like I want to hear the full story. Oh, yeah, I just just in that moment

I gotta hear more about you. So Yeah, so just tell everyone about just give them the real quick cliff notes resume

So people kind of know what we're gonna talk about and then we'll kind of dissect their piece by piece. Yeah So I I guess

First of all, thanks for having me on this is really exciting for me to get to tell this story and so many things I've never really talked about before So I guess

I spent I've spent the past 30 or so years exploring Spirituality and world religions kind of firsthand because as far back as I can remember

I've been interested in the search for truth It's just been part of who I am Nothing that I was really ever sent on.

It's just part of my own curiosity. So I was born Jewish I was bar mitzvahed when I was 13 and my

Torah portion which is kind of like the the portion that's given as the sermon in church and my Torah portion was the

Ten Commandments and That was randomly assigned. I didn't pick it So if you're gonna get a Torah portion, it's a pretty good one to start with and I remember the rabbi was going over the the nature of the

Ten Commandments with me and I remember he said something along the lines of The second the second five of the

Ten Commandments are there So you don't violate the first of the five Ten Commandments something like that and I remember thinking

I was 13 I was like or 12 actually It's like that's really interesting that there's the structure to this that I never would have thought about before and that's the first time that I can remember really having a thought about religion or spirituality and that that curiosity

So it's really you're in it as a young boy You're in a synagogue and your rabbi's having this conversation about the

Ten Commandments That just gets you just curious that kind of like what is this? Let me even you see more what this is all about.

Is that kind of yeah what that was all about? Yeah I mean it was in the rabbi's office and he was he was talking to me about that I can still remember myself in the chair and having this little spark of a thought like That's really interesting because I knew what the

Ten Commandments were But I didn't I'd never really given any thought to them as a thing

I remember being 12 years old and be like that's really interesting and being really curious about that And that's the first time

I remember having thoughts about religion or spirituality of this idea of wanting to explore and so then after that I went to went to a

Jesuit high school Brophy here in Phoenix and Class a class on hermeneutics and exegesis on as Isaiah was was the book that I got and It was interesting being

I was Jewish at the time Being growing up Jewish and going to a Catholic high school and having to figure out like well

I don't know much about Catholicism But I know that whatever I believe is not the same as what these other boys believe and having to come into some amount of Reconciliation with that but not being uncomfortable with it.

Like other people were like, you know, you're Jewish. Why are you here? It's like this is the place where I'm meant to be right or not.

This is the best school in town It's where I'm supposed to be going and so that was the first time I was really introduced to the idea of there being multiple world religions and having to exist in this space of Well, I don't know how to reconcile these two.

So I'm just gonna exist in the tension of it 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 cultish?

Well, guess what you get to do exactly that this October October 27th through the 29th at reform con

It's gonna be a great and awesome live converse. There's gonna 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 reform con

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

Now back to the episode With jet when you mentioned like you're going to a Jesuit high school I feel like that word it gets thrown around especially

What a new age in the New Age world just because it's very that Jesuits almost gets thrown out as a pejorative

Okay, these are the people that are controlling the world. You know, dr. Fouch is a Jesuit this person is a Jesuit I don't know the

Pope is a Jesuit right? Yeah, like what is like for you? What's that? Like I mean being in that world

I mean was they they have kind of like their own brand of I know like what's what from your perspective like what's that?

Like with being in a Jesuit high school Somewhere in the sophomore year They took us down into the catacombs where they showed us the place that they actually controlled the world from oh, it's a big control

Yeah, it's like oh, that's interesting. No, I mean Yeah, exactly is that several floors beneath the ground?

What's the spies like us like Chevy that Chevy chase movie, right? No, I mean, I I don't know that I could

Properly articulate the difference between Jesuit and and Catholic proper theology But they really cared about making sure that that we got a good education

Especially the priests that really came across they forced us to think very hard about literary and religious issues asked very tough questions and Not every teacher there was was

Catholic or Jesuit for that matter Now all of them were priests, but I just remember it being a very rigorous education that taught me how to think critically about things

But I don't know that I ever learned while I was there that much about Catholic Theology or I didn't know how to take in when

I was learning We learned about the Bible and about Western religion the Western religious tradition kind of broadly

But I never walked away feeling like oh, I want to be Catholic now But I didn't participate in the masses and I did go on the retreats the

Kairos retreats that they were leading which had a lot of singing and a lot Of personal discussions about life and and forgiveness and stuff

So that was that was what I got exposed to there But I wouldn't say that I'd be able to really say what Jesuit theology is about.

Yeah with Your pursuit of religion just curiosity. What was your what was your upbringing?

Like did you have a like a strong? household mother and father or what was the nature of your upbringing when it comes to that because I feel like a lot of times when

I've spoken with people who are in that who kind of ended with going to the New Age a lot of the cows from goat goes to that comes from Their their background as far as a home whether to put together home.

Most of the times are broken home What was that like for you growing up? my parents were married and You know, they stayed married to the entire time while I was home

They did get divorced after I went to college and I wouldn't say that that was where my excuse me

Where that was my interest where my interest in spirituality came from that really? Started when

I moved up to the Bay Area to go to college and I sort of became immersed in this You know bear and New Age new wave kind of like way of looking at the world where and I became a

DJ in the rave scene played in nightclubs and festivals and that was where that whole thing really really took off with a lot of the experiences that I had with psychedelics and drugs and Buddhism and Eastern mysticism was just a part of that and that's where I really began exploring the

New Age because it was just a taken -for -granted way of seeing the world right my interest in spirituality broadly is

Has been a part of me as far back as I can remember But when I was growing up just to give a sense of the religious background like we weren't

There's different kinds of Judaism. We were mostly secular, but we did observe the the high holidays

So, you know, I'm Kapoor and Rosh Hashanah at the big the big auditorium downtown the big high holiday services

We did go to those we didn't celebrate Christmas. We celebrated Passover But there was it wasn't really like a discussion about this is how ultimate reality works

It was more of like a cultural thing. So it wasn't until it wasn't until I got to the California That I really started diving into a lot as a young kid like the

Hanukkah song, but I'm saying though Like you'd really resonate with that. You're gonna be funny for a second. I just taking me back.

Yeah Yeah, so you're you're in very traditional a

Jewish household very, you know strict observance At least from your perspective of the Torah, you know, the observance of certain holidays and other holidays

You're not involved in right like at what point? Did kind of like the very first step like into the

New Age? Go to like oh, yeah, like an Eckhart Tolle book Was it some sort of what was it like a

Tony Robbins like audio where he's talking about the law of attraction? Or you know some for some people it starts off with a book the secret right and then it goes to some sort of Conference that is like the authors hosting with a bunch of other people then they find out like dr

Wayne Dyer like you name it and just Starts going and progressing like what was it like for you?

Where was the first where was like step one of the first path on a thousand steps?

Well when I went to when I went to the Bay Area to go to school I took I was taking classes on on Taoism and Buddhism in college because again

I was expressing my religious interest, but it wasn't until New Year's Eve 2000 y2k

Actually, I was at a rave here in Phoenix I was living in California But I came back to go to this rave and I took an ecstasy pill and I had that first Psychedelic experience, you know and immediately after that fell into the whole the whole

DJ world and the underground DJ world in California at the time was just saturated with Saturated with you know be here now

Terrence McKenna, this is pre 9 -eleven too. So it's like Terrence McKenna wrote a book called

It's about the primate something about the primitive Return of the primitive something like that and again Ram Dass and a lot of Eastern mysticism and Hinduism and you and you know

Paramahansa Yogananda like it's just part of that world And so that's how I that's how I splashed down into it.

These conversations were happening all the time Well, yeah, there's always interesting too because things do go hand in hand It's funny you mentioned the whole the whole

DJ and trance world Yeah, and how like literally that goes hand -in -hand with ecstasy

So when you think so like the pre 2000 the only reason why I know about trance is because pastor Jeff we ran a karate school together

And he would like listen to like that techno and trance as he would like work on his karate work on his form

So I know it's a byproduct why I know people like DJ Tiesto Paul Oakenfold, but when you the people who go down those rabbit trails, especially those who like go to their concerts

Man, oh man, like you are entering you're not you're entering to a wild world when you go into that Those two things that are connected.

Oh, yeah, but you also see the commonality between Even like psychedelic uses what we'll jump into in New Age spirituality.

They're inherently intertwined. Mm -hmm Yeah, so that the DJ world has like three layers to it

There's the the nightclub world which is you know, which is the which is like a nightclub, you know

Alcohol and stuff like that a layer bullet beneath that there's like the small rave and like where houses are in the forest or something

Like that that's a different set of drugs and then you go to the big massive festivals I know you want to talk about Burning Man and Burning Man Yeah, there's the most massive all of them.

That's where you get into the really the hardcore psychedelics that's where you get into the the Acid and mushrooms and DMT and all that stuff

So the deeper you go into it the more The more psychedelic it gets versus like the surface level and the bars and stuff like that So that that whole world is really where you got you get to see where the values are made manifest, right?

You know into just Again, Eastern mysticism and Shiva and Buddha and alien mushrooms and stuff like that And they really believe all that like that's just and Jesus not a lot of those festivals, by the way

He's not he's not welcome. You could sneak him in though. We'll talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, um with so you're doing the

DJ trance start getting into ecstasy and tell me again, like how did that? Like how to explain like what was the catalyst from those two things put together into like the other new age modalities

Yeah, so in that world, you know, we're just when we're not like DJing We're just all hanging out and talking and naturally we're talking about spirituality

Also, the matrix came out around this time and that got everyone asking all these big questions about reality

You know, it's like wake up out of the matrix, right? So it's just sort of a subject of conversation and people are again reading spiritual books and are going back to the 60s

You know cuz Ram Dass wrote this book called be here now, right and you start exploring the origins of the

DJ culture What's it which is in the psychedelic culture of like the 1960s sort of metastasized to like a new to a new expression through through DJ Culture, so that's just the stuff that we're talking about.

Yeah, you know Also to like I'm I'm 41 and you're you like to you. I'm 44 44.

Okay I guess both of us are aging well, so yes, I guess I got to keep on working on that. But um, yeah, dude

People don't realize I mean it right now is 2022. Yeah, and they're right now you can go on Netflix or Amazon Prime or you can go to all the different streaming stations

I people didn't realize like the impact that the film like the matrix had.

Yeah, like it was Revolutionary from special -effects like obviously bullet time like seeing

Trinity jump up and do that 360k And watching kind of like all that Eastern film and the first dojo fight scene and fighting agent

Smith. Yeah, but there was so much layered like Spirituality in that that got people this what made it a cult film

I think there's plenty of other films that came out at that time with cool like similar special -effects. Mm -hmm there was something about the matrix that was

Really had a longevity Because of what was communicated even when you talk about these psychedelics like the very opening scene where I will this where Neo is talking to this the people that he's doing the trade -off

He's giving him, you know, cuz he's a hacker. Mm -hmm. And all of a sudden he's like you ever have that feeling like you're awake

You don't really know it and I think the guy refers to some sort of masculine masculine. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, but then all of a sudden he follows them like to this night rave techno club.

Yep, which was so prominent Like during that time, you know, so it would make sense especially for anyone around this time like in college

I there was a cult film. I knew people who watched like 50 60 times. It was crazy Yeah, if you were dressing up and waiting in line and also at the same time a bunch of movies came out and I think

It's the same summer the same time. It was the matrix Yeah fight club office space all three of these movies came out around the same time

And there was also this movie blade with Wesley Yeah, you know where he goes to the underground vampire rave right just part of the it was part of the culture

It was just being manifest in all these ways But when you put together the message of the matrix fight club and office space, that's a pretty powerful

Anti -establishment message that takes everything way too far It says true things but then the conclusions that these movies draw are way way way too extreme

Yeah, ultimately destructive but when you feed that all into the mind of young college kids They don't they don't know any better and when you have a destroyed social structure many of whom are coming from Broken homes kind of situations.

They don't necessarily have the critical thinking skills to be able to say Hey, maybe that's going a bit too far, but that's what was going on around around the turn of the century

Yeah, no, no, no for sure. And then I'm yeah, what's also when you talk about the Millennium?

I mean like time wise to a lot of people don't realize from 1997 to 2000 there was just a lot of Wondering like what did the year 2000 like really until why in the

Millennium? There was just a lot of people that had a pocket of ideas. You had like y2k all the computers in the world.

Oh, yeah There there are plenty of people even like people Bible prophecy experts saying the book

Revelation was talking about y2k and here We all all this later lost technology intact. Yeah, exactly

Yeah, so where where did it go from here? So you're checking out stuff like the matrix you're in the DJ world.

You start experimenting with other stuff Obviously you mentioned masculine and other things like I did I personally didn't try masculine

But acid ecstasy mushrooms were like just part of the part of the currency, I guess you might say

Yeah, also, I left school. I started my own company. I'd started a dot -com and so we had raised like 25 million dollars from Hewlett -Packard

So, you know, I was a young guy. I was at the time like 21 22 years old making a ton of money, you know, and you know

I don't have anything to spend it on but having a good time So here I am able to have a really great time on the weekends and still get my stuff done during the week in this

Visionary kind of world. So then once that wrapped up I went back to school and that's when I discovered Jungian psychology

I took a class on Carl Jung which is all about the inner mind and right and the and the way to understand the self in This and so that all fit together with all the

DJ stuff from the psychedelic world Going into the inner world like all the different pieces of the mind the way to understand oneself

And that's when that's when I started going in that direction of exploring psychology Yeah It's almost like you were seeing like the layers of like one ism like yeah, no blend like a complete blending of Us with creation.

There's no distinction between creator and creation always one all this self. Yes Yes, and all of a sudden it's like you are reading this philosophy that's depicting this worldview and then you're saying

Just tell me if I'm correct I'm just thinking out loud like this worldview is almost affirming or depicting accurately my your psychedelic experiences

It's helping understand the psychedelic experiences because the psychedelic experiences take you deep and into yourself and not necessarily in good ways or even

Enjoyable ways, but it's difficult to understand what's actually going on in there because it's a it's a big mess inside the human mind there's so and mind and heart there's so much going on and Young Jung's approach to it and Freud as well because young base was based on Freud's work

Helped me start taking some of those things apart in in some of those It was actually good because it helped me understand like confusing things that I was experiencing

But the ideology that comes with it the oneist ideology that comes with so much of it is the part that they don't actually talk

About you know, it's it's some of the ideas like hey You can use this site you can use this to change your life And what you don't understand is all these other train cars are attached to that idea that you never end up questioning that I didn't

End up questioning until years later. Yeah. All right. So where did it go from here? Did you know when you got into the young?

Psychology did it end there was like, okay I'm I think I've found I found the oasis in the desert

I can just reside here and go on with my life or was that a catalyst to go to try one thing after another

That's how that's how the new age the new age world works is it's always It's always one thing after another.

Yep I can I can explain why that is or do you want me to save that for later? You know Maybe explain maybe just a little bit because and this is something if anyone has listened into our other episode

You see a consistent pattern with people people will get into the new age by way of like a simple book

Maybe getting into something where they experience a psychedelic for the first time, but it's never enough

It's almost I use the term of spiritual narcotic. Yes, very much that an actor. Is that an accurate depiction?

It's both so the the new age world is heavily based on Eastern mysticism like Advaita Vedanta and in some aspects of Buddhism What the

East what Eastern mysticism says is any notion of you and me being separate beings is actually false

Then at a deeper level of reality all is all is one So we have this experience of having a conscious mind of having an ego of having free will

Eastern mysticism says your free will is an illusion So you have this knot of consciousness, right?

And you have to get past this knot of consciousness to realize your eternal oneness and that's enlightenment or nirvana

To get past this knot of consciousness You have to untie the knot what the new age does is it takes that and it says to untie this really complicated knot

You have to do this modality to peel off this and then this modality to peel off this and then you end up you end

Up peeling forever trying to undo this knot of free will but you'll never actually get there

You can never actually do it Well, even from a worldview standpoint that's self -refuting because you are the knot and the knot is you like how can you untie yourself from something?

Yes, that is yourself in the same way the whole idea behind the new age And I feel like every single person who is they always try and seek ascension by any way possible whether it's

Trying like said trying to go to Burning Man or trying to do Kundalini yoga. It's Reiki healing

They're all trying to ascend but how do you ascend? Outside of yourself when all this self there's no way to get outside of this and so it ends up being

Like literally like this vicious karmic circle. Yes. Yes You you that's why people get trapped in this loop of spending more and more money and doing more and more extreme things

Like if you haven't actually achieved it, you just haven't tried hard enough yet So trying hard can be an investment of either time money or energy and so you get people doing these really these really difficult practices for long periods of time trying to undo the knot of self or Spending tens of thousands of dollars or even giving their lives over to a guru

Stuff like that to the more energy that you pour into yourself trying to undo yourself And as you as you rightfully sense, it's a it's a trap and you can't actually you can't actually do it

Yeah, so after you're doing that type of psychology in that study in in college like what was the next step?

Because again given what we're talking about and this is a progressive story didn't end there What was the next step after that the next step after that is

I around the same time? I started going to a Burning Man. I've been to three times and that's just what you do in the

Bay Area It's just now it's a first time was 2003 2003. Yeah, what was it? Like the very first time that you went there

It's like though it was kind of like the Wild West actually like no one really knew what they were doing Everything was very much like plywood and fire and it had this real like renegade spirit

But also infused with a lot of the a lot of the same drugs and sex kind of sexuality

But now how did you find out about it? Cuz like 2003 was pre social media. I mean we had we had email

America online. Oh Do we could we text in 2003? I can't remember. I first texted in 2004

So I don't think so, but even if you did you had to hit like one Between yeah, a

See, yeah, I can't even tell people to you know, it's like the younger generation You got the iPhone 14 coming out like you haven't seen the things

I've seen You don't know me. We We had to fast -forward through cassette tapes we want to hear the next song

Yeah, yeah to get it right when you were rewinding. Yeah, but communicate was a word -of -mouth or was it a flyer? Did you get it like an ad was it just like part of maybe just a college fraternity?

Back In the DJ and rave scene, you know, we would go to festivals there'd be various and this is in the

Bay Area, too So there'd be various festivals in the Bay Area to go to and people just knew about it and in the

Bay Area We did actually have other forms of social media. We had Tribe net which was very popular.

I don't know that it ever made it nationwide and live journal So those were two social media platforms that me and my circle of friends were using

Someone would inevitably find out about like oh, there's this thing in the desert plus at that point Burning Man had been going on At Baker Beach in San Francisco for I want to say like 10 years

So it started on a beach just beneath the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and then it got so big

Then it moved out to the Nevada desert where people have started hearing about it now So I think when I went in 2003 it had been in the desert for maybe, you know, three to five years

But even then it was 30 ,000 people, right? But it was all just a word -of -mouth thing and it was even back then it was like it was like people would say

Oh, I'm taking the last week off. They wouldn't tell their employers. It's like oh I'm gonna take this week off to go on vacation to go spend time with family as what people would say

Yeah, but now Burning Man is literally part of cult of San Francisco culture. Like you have to go home

Well, it's also interesting too. Well, he knocked over actually this book Kingdom of the Occult by dr.

Walter Martin I figured have this on set just yeah, I mean what this is a catalyst for a conversation that yeah We'll talk about further on the podcast

By now if you want in the video you've watched the video you've seen a long enough, you know what the book is Yeah, he's great. By the way, you introduced me to him.

He's awesome. Yeah Yeah, definitely. So like 2003 you had like 30 ,000 people. Yeah that were at this festival

Mm -hmm like what did What did you see like happening like at the specimen like drugs and everything people are just sort of doing everything like they are now

It's kind of dressing up all these like different Costumes wearing stuff or the lack thereof

Yeah, and people are just yeah kind of take us into that world. Mm -hmm So so Burning Man is a music and arts festival in the

Nevada and Nevada You're putting like quotation marks. Well like so so there's a whole ideology that comes with the

Burning Man world and Very similar to one ism in the New Age and Eastern mysticism

They frame all forms of self -expression as inherently spiritual and if it's inherently spiritual

It's inherently good So the idea is that you go out to Burning Man for one week a year and you are free to express yourself

However seems best for you Whatever constraints that you put on yourself in the normal world you take those off when you go to Burning Man and you express yourself

However, you want and your freedom of self -expression Whatever that is whether that's painting your body blue and walking around naked whether it's you know

All kinds of hedonistic practices drinking drugs alcohol sex dancing, whatever it is

And also and also artwork and music and stuff that is by nature inherently inherently spiritual

So you see all of that out there, you know, it's it's it's and it's the place where it's not only and it's not only

Facilitated it's encouraged, you know It's it's like you're supposed to go out there and you're supposed to express yourself express yourself in the craziest possible way

And that's how you do Burning Man. That's how you do it Right is to is to really to really do it up like are you really expressing yourself enough?

Are you going crazy enough? Are you really being spiritual enough? That's the whole ideology behind the thing. So but back then

It wasn't as clearly articulated. So you had people like what are we doing out here in the desert? I'll just kind of go crazy, you know and and and do cool stuff and blow stuff up that we couldn't do in the regular world

But I went back ten years later in 2013 and all that had changed and the festival had really gone pro and it really it's its values had really hardened and crystallized

Into hedonism and and radical self -expression of whatever it is is is now mandatory back then

It was it was a bit more renegade really like the Wild West those values were there, but it was just an element But then that those values had taken over a decade later

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So we thank you all for watching us and now back to the episode Even though I never saw the movie there's a

I think there's a couple news that came out like the purge We're all said like one one night you get one night to be able to do whatever you want to do

Yeah, the rest of the time everything else is like illegal. Yeah, almost in the same way Burning Man. You've got like one week

Yes, fully express yourself literally, but then once that happens you get back in your gas guzzling

RVs and create a bunch of carbon emissions as you are driving out of Burning Man Yes given and but the rest of time you can worry about saving the planet, right?

Well, that's the thing is they call the people who go to Burning Man call it home And when you write when you drive up to Burning Man at the entrance

This is a big science as welcome home Right the idea being Burning Man is your home where you can be your true self and you're being your fake self

The rest of the time now that that ideas has this romantic kind of appeal But it's actually really destructive to think that way that you that 51 weeks of your life per year

You're not home, but that one week of the year is your home It's actually the other way around but people get really lost and they focus their whole lives on that one week of the year where they can really be themselves and Completely miss that the rest of the year.

You're also actually like being yourself. Yeah, I hate and so you so you nailed it Yeah, so in other words like they're they're

Literally like planning like when someone's leaving like we have that we post the picture on social media of that nine -hour

Like track. Yeah, that's a thing leaving Burning man, but even like as they're leaving as they're in many ways both physically and spiritually hungover for that entire week

That's all the craziness They're already thinking. Okay. How do we how do I get myself ready for next year?

Yes, they'll get back and they'll immediately start thinking about next year. So as I start planning and everything

Okay, and so like what about Blackrock they call it Blackrock City. Mm -hmm. That's the name for it

Like why where that name come from? Why are they called that? You know, I I don't actually know But it's just that it's the location

Blackrock City is that the formal name of the place Burning Man is the festival? That's held at Blackrock City, but Blackrock City doesn't exist except for Except for a couple weeks a year when

I say a couple weeks the festival itself was only one week but there are a bunch of people on site a Week to two weeks before building all the structures and then a week to two weeks after tearing it all down and cleaning up But Blackrock City is where they host it.

Gotcha. Okay, that makes sense then so like going back like you're you're Trajectory of a journey and like looking into spirituality

Understanding this like this. What was the name of the psychology you're going through in high school. It was young in psychology So you're going through all that and then you go to Burning Man for the first time and people have kind of seen

Bits and pieces even a lot of people are social media like there's like moms who are like, what is Burning Man? Yeah, they don't even know what it is.

Yeah, and maybe I can just go off track just for a second This is important. Like why are we even discussing something like Burning Man?

Yeah, what was something that was kind of fringe? on like back in 2003 that was like super punk rock

This is like an underground Like punk rock showed like whoever the people who saw the Ramones for the first time and some backstage somewhere

Like that would be equivalent to what Burning Man was in 2003. That's fair Now it would be the equivalent of them like opening up with the

Rolling Stones and like everyone knows Who the Ramones and the Rolling Stones are yes, and not only that there are there are burns

Burning Man festivals now that are around the world Burning Man was always intended to not just be one festival in the

Nevada desert now There are there are continental and even national burns a thing called Africa burn, right?

Apparently some of these some of these Burning Man festivals around the world attract tens of thousands of people as well Yeah, so where they're exporting the ideology to other countries, right?

So this is just indicative of what you're seeing depicted in entertainment. You're seeing the normalization of psychedelics, but you're also seeing the normalization of These festivals, which is really just a regurgitation of just ancient neo -paganism

I mean like if anyone actually looks at what happens in a Burning Man festival, like are you actually shocked?

You mean given the fact if you did look at ancient Greece if you look at the Persian Empire look at any of these ancient

Empires, are they not? They're doing Similar festivals and then some like way extra than we are now.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Absolutely, you know, and I know I Have never been there praise

God for that, but and I heard about it only after but there's a place at Burning Man called the Orgy dome It's literally a door at the dome that you can walk into and I got no idea what goes on in there

But I think the name itself is provocative enough. It seems to be very self -explanatory for sure I think so and the thing is if you make yourself and your own self -expression

God and you seek to worship that God What's the end product of that the end product of that? Whatever?

Everything is permitted do what thou wilt. I was literally thinking that I was about to say the exact same thing

Yeah world views have consequences for absolutely do absolutely do. All right, so you laugh so leaving 2003 like after you experience really the underground version of Burning Man for the first time

Like what was it was as to where you're still kind of rubbing and running off It's really like the spiritual ecstasy where it felt like this is the most amazing transcendent experience

Was it kind of like I don't know well, maybe they have you longing for something more or what what happened after that?

Yeah, I mean at that point it just becomes a way of life, you know exploring new age mystical kind of ideas

Is just the way that I'm kind of living again Part of that is because of my natural curiosity about spirituality and religion that goes back to when

I was a little kid part of it is because that's the cultural expectation of living in San Francisco part of that is being in the dance and DJ world and Part of it is like, you know an inappropriate fun, you know, like it's like it's not necessarily good for me

But it's like it's just part of my life and all this way that I'm not really questioning Part of the reason why that is is because there's no worldview that's permitted to be outside it that questions it because the only worldview

That's outside of Eastern mysticism New Age is Christianity and you know, you that's the place you don't go there

That is the forbidden land, right? So so where are you gonna pop out from the New Age world to look at it objectively from the outside?

There really isn't any there really isn't any option right besides like atheism But like atheism ultimately ends up in a very similar similar place of hedonism just with fewer mystical trappings

Yeah, and that's what that's the distinction I think one of the reasons why Jesus the real person the

Jesus Christ of Nazareth who is the God come in the flesh is so antithetical to New Age thinking and and it just all sorts of pagan spirituality and and whatever you want to call it is because Jesus Christ represents distinctly to ISM versus one

ISM. Yes. There's a complete distinction between creator and creation But there's also a complete intermingling of sorts of the flesh in the spirit

Because a lot of this spirituality is also connected to Gnosticism Which was the first and the first enemy of the

Christian Church where Gnosticism was saying that the flesh is evil But the spirit is good and you see that also carried out in the idea of like the ego and trying to separate yourself

The gospel and who Christ is makes that categorical distinction So as much as people will try and have

Jesus on their team and try and say he's an extended master It's consciousness, right? Yeah, but when you start actually pushing on who the

Gospels are There's a lot of willful prejudice towards, you know, explaining the way the

Gospels But holy giving credence to something like the gospel of Thomas or the gospel of the Essenes, right? There's definitely a willful prejudice there for sure

What is so you're talking about, you know being curious? What happened after 2003 Burning Man, I kind of know you said you started traveling

Way later way later. Well, what was the category? It was 2003 I didn't travel a bit.

I did travel overseas in Europe in 2004 for about three weeks Maybe it's longer than that.

But that was more that was more an expression of like, yeah, I want to be a professional DJ So I'm gonna go to the nightclubs in Europe and I'm gonna see how they do things down there

I wouldn't say that was necessarily like a Spiritual trip a New Age trip But I mean it had everything in the

New Age world has this entire attitude of it's all about developing and expressing the self So I would say that it was spiritual in the sense of like this is my heroes

This is my hero's journey right to do this So it was spiritual in that sense, but it wasn't like I'm gonna go do explicitly

New Age kind of things But I did go to Europe in 2004. But what so you continue with your question? I mean, yeah the next time you went was 2000 2013 2013.

Yeah, and but then you went again in 20 2015 2015 like what like maybe walk through like what was the gap in between those

Burning Man's like you Like what was a linear timeline of things? You got curious into you mentioned you're doing DJing in Europe, which

I can only imagine I mean, yeah, that's extra on top of like American DJing and clubbing.

Take it seriously over there Oh, yeah, very seriously As we said and he's like the standard a lot of times is anything worth doing is worth overdoing

And you probably saw that carried out for sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah a good example Is that you know in America? Nightclubs only stay open usually until 2 o 'clock in the morning or so because that's when the bars close, right?

So but in Europe nightclubs like start at 2 o 'clock in the morning Around the world because they don't have those same the same laws

So and the entire the entire global DJ world is fueled by cocaine and alcohol like yeah, that's just how it runs

Thankfully, I never got into either of those things But I know a lot of people who've completely lost themselves as a result of that But so I guess over the course of from 2003 to 2013

I continued exploring psychology probably more directly in the realm of of Jungian psychology

Because I found it was really it was really interesting to try and understand my own mind as a man because studying Masculinity has been something that I've been interested in for the past by this point

It's like 20 or so years But I found that it was helpful for me to understand that to heal various aspects of myself

But I continued reading as many books about Eastern mysticism and spirituality as I could get my hands on That's when

I found Eckhart Tolle There was a book called like new self new world which tries to put Buddhism together with like astrology

And various practices like that I've done all kinds of different healing modalities different kinds of body work and sound healing and and all the stuff

It's just what you do, you know It's like oh that sounds that sounds like a cool way to experience the self or to transcend the self

Let me do that. And so I spent a number of years doing that I didn't go back to Burning Man during that time because Burning Man is actually a very expensive

Proposition to go. What do people like how much did it cost? Do you know what it costs now to go to it wasn't like $2 ,500 just for the ticket?

Oh, I don't even know but I would expect to pay at least that much because you have to bring your own food Bring your own water, right?

How are you gonna get out there? Are you gonna borrow someone's car? Your car is gonna get full of dust You're gonna have to get your car cleaned, you know, are you going to an

RV and RV is a whole whole thing You know, do you want to camp in a tent like you can go on the cheap?

But you're gonna be spending, you know on the cheap still means probably like a couple a thousand to two thousand dollars

If I had to guess I don't even know what the tickets are The last I heard a discount ticket was nine hundred dollars, but that may have changed

But remember 80 ,000 people and plus so run the numbers on that plus there are camps

So giant camps of people I believe that the camps have to pay a fee as well huge money -making endeavor the

Burning Man Foundation, I think it's called which helps coordinate all these worldwide. It's a giant It's a giant organization that has a giant ideology attached to it that no one ever questions because the promise of drugs and sex

And hedonism is and fun and breaking free from the strictures of society And so no one ever asked the question like what they're signing up for and what they're what they're swallowing

You know when they write and not ever seen and some people are just going along to have like a fun just a fun time That's a party time when you look at it almost

Even like looking at some of the videos like I know People I'm connected to who went and they're posting on their

Instagram stories and some of the stuff looks like vehicles like out of Mad Max Fury Road Like people literally is like something look like someone's playing something like that one guy with a guitar with a probably fire going out of It yeah, like it looks like something out of it.

So there's almost part of me Even as a Christian we're talking about aspects in which is spiritual dangers.

There's parts visually. I'm like that sounds kind of cool They're there They're very cool things to see there like there are people that that take the opportunity

On the desert on the playa to do works of art that they can't do anywhere else, right? You know, but but again when you're going what are you going to be exposed to?

What are you going to be around? What are you going to witness? What are you going to be asked to take for granted that actually you shouldn't be taken for granted, right?

The worldview that comes with it, right what is the So like what does like the

Burning Man represent? I mean, it's there all week this tower and it's like it's a circled in cam

If anyone looks if you can Google like Burning Man view guys looked it up the other day Mm -hmm. I'm someone again from the outside looking in it's you got a thousand people and it's essentially like circling the circle

Mm -hmm, and the Burning Man's right in the middle and then it's at the very very end of the festival where they burn it

Yeah, they blow it up. What's what's the idea? Behind that did that idea come out of a vacuum or is there like a worldview?

Behind what they're trying to depict in this festival that you're aware of within the Burning Man community

There's a lot of debate about what the man stands for and and this I think the party line if you want to call it that is the man stands for whatever you want it to and I never

I never really bought that. I always looked at the man as representing I'm the man, you know, like that's like, you know, stick it to the man kind of thing like society, you know

Western civilization Whatever you want to call it rules laws external authority like they're gonna set up the man and the man is who?

Who we all worship? I'm applying this language to the thoughts that I would have had at the time the man who's what we all worship during the year right and we go out to Burning Man and We have this big party where we do whatever we want for six or seven days in the desert.

No laws No rules, no, whatever right and then we blow up the man Man and then and then

Saturday night turns into just this giant giant disaster So so that's that's what

I think the man stands for now You can apply I suppose whatever you want to to the man. It can be a man

It can be particular it can be a version of yourself but I really think the man that's meant to be burned is the laws of what we might understand or understand is like modern society

Yeah, and so in between this time You're you're going around kind of jumping from you know, spiritual practice a spiritual practice basically just going from a bcd efg when it comes to practices and then it was a while you have to thought you have a five -year gap between 2000 well ten years no ten years.

Mm -hmm Like why why the extended amount of time like what made you all of a sudden like say, okay? It's time. It's time to go back

Was it just did just work out that way or is this something that recollected maybe trying to maybe recapture?

Some of the spiritual ecstasy back then or what was the transition in period a lot of things happened for me around the same time at 23rd in 2013 but part of what happened in that 10 -year gap is

I got into a relationship and And I'm very much a camping centric kind of guy

Yeah she was very much a RV centric kind of girl and the To go to a festival like Burning Man in an

RV is a much more massive expense than than a tent for me So so we were unable to reconcile on that one and plus, you know, the money went to other things

So but in 2013 a couple that was friends of mine got married and they were having their honeymoon at Burning Man So they invited them they invited some of their close friends to come with them in an

RV so the RV was all taken care of so me my girlfriend at the time went back in 2013 as part of their

RV to celebrate this couple's honeymoon. That's like it seems to be such the opposite like idea of honeymoon

It's like You know like I'm engaged right now and we're in I'm talking with my fiancee about like where we're gonna go and what that looks

Like we're thinking Coachella private private. Yeah private. I'm thinking like private cabin out in the mountains

Maybe somewhere like alone with the two of us, but the idea of going Where there's 80 ,000 people and given you know now as Christians we're looking the monogamous nature of like being

Together and being married and and and honest like you just mentioned there's a place where there's a where there's orgies going on Mm -hmm.

It just seems to be the total last place. I would think of in my mind that would do a honeymoon at yeah it's it

Burning Man is renowned for being near lethal to relationships if only because not necessarily because one person wants to get involved in orgies and the other doesn't but because You know one person may want to go do one thing and the other person wants to go do another thing and it's like well

We're supposed to be together I want to do this you want to do that and it causes a lot of tension and then when you add to it all the opportunities for all the skin that's on display turning heads or whatever or Temptations or someone has a bad trip or whatever and you don't get to do that.

Whatever. It's lethal on relationships Now this was a really strong couple So they were able to withstand that but in general like Burning Man is renowned for like if you're going in a relationship

Either like pretend you're not in the relationship when you go to Burning Man or prepare to come out not in a relationship

Yeah, and also I just also just to become weary you given that we have an audience with you know Mostly we're in here.

We have people from all Face backgrounds who listen to our show But you worry that if you do look up Even if you start looking

Google images for Burning Man if you have friends who have gone to Burning Man you start scrolling through pictures You're probably gonna see things you you might not you might regret seeing later.

That's just the nature of the festival That's just the nature and it's on it. It's a byproduct to of the worldview of do out do as that wilt

Yes, you see that put on display at this festival very much So I mean mostly if you go looking for Burning Man, you'll see lots of really like gauzy edited videos of people

Having this happy cheery sunshine a good time and those things are real But behind the scenes of all that people are not gonna they're not gonna post the videos of the orgy dome

They're not gonna post videos of people getting in fights. They're not gonna post people of you know, passing out You know being sick falling down whatever like you're not gonna see all that stuff

But it's a it's a big part of the festival Like it's it's very difficult to avoid drama and strife and conflict at the festival

It's well, even now when you look at they're not gonna put in videos. We're gonna maybe talk about this later

Ayahuasca psychedelics DMT. Yeah, those things are being normalized everywhere Joe Rogan Aubrey Marcus who we're gonna talk about his conversation

Yeah with Aaron Rodgers. This is this is being normalized even the field of mental health. This is a good and great thing

What a lot of times isn't shared is The bet when you see someone experiencing a bad trip, it's not a pretty thing to observe

Yeah, you abs I mean when you were there that was that's something that would be 80 ,000 people at a festival that's got to be something that's not on the flashy happy highlights, right?

Absolutely, and you can the thing is you can't escape from the festival There's nowhere you can go because there's always there's always loud music playing somewhere.

There's always chaos There's always noise it quiets down at night But there's no escape from the heat and the dust and the intensity and yeah

Like, you know some of these some of these things aren't necessarily done in public Like if you're gonna be, you know smoking DMT, which is definitely done there

It's in private tents, but you got no idea what's going on in there. You can't control your environment You can't control your influences and people are just throwing themselves into this and it's like Fantastically dangerous

Fantastically dangerous and and I've had some bad trips in other circumstances. I never did psychedelics like that a burning man

I've had some bad trips and it's it's a bad scene It's a bad it's a bad scene and to hear people talking about psychedelics in the mainstream without acknowledging the real danger

That comes with these substances is it's it's pretty shocking to me Hey, what's up, everyone?

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Yeah So 2008 you went you came experience the same thing.

What was name in regards to the I'm sorry 20 I keep on thinking 2008 as a 2013 the 10 -year difference

What was the difference in regards to like growth popularity the difference between the festivals? Like what what was the main differences that you saw at that time in 2003 again

It was very much the Wild West things were made out of plywood You know, there were cure crude like flamethrowers because fire was a big thing in the desert and lasers and stuff

Yeah cut to ten years later Burning Man had gone pro you have camp spending literally millions of dollars to build giant outdoor like quasi nightclubs

There was there was a truck called the robot heart and the robot heart is a giant bus

That was like multi multi -million dollar project with this giant nightclub quality sound system

That would just drive around and be this roving rave so you had gone from you know, you had gone from from camps made of plywood and and pipe like that sort of plastic piping that You use in like your home or whatever like under your sink to like giant multi -million dollar art cars

You know that take a year to build and drive in and drive out it had really gone pro and then in that in that decade

Burning Man had gone from something that you kind of whispered to people that you were going to and you didn't tell your boss About in the

Bay Area at least it had gone to now the big tech Executives are going and so there are whole camps full of like luxury buses that Park in a circle and that you need a wristband to get into where all the food is cooked for them and everything like that It became a vacation for tech executives

That's that's what it had become in about a decade and to the point where Burning Man had been an underground part of San Francisco culture to part of San Francisco culture meaning like participation in Burning Man was like just something that everyone took for granted and if and you just can't say

I'm going to Burning Man for my vacation and it wasn't something to be ashamed of it was something to kind of celebrate the rest of the year as well

Yeah Yeah, and then so then like time -wise those front then but then you had a shorter two -year gap between 2013 2015 did the did any other traveling for you personally take place between Those two times no because during that two -year gap is when we started out the conversation talking about the tarot cards

Yeah, and it was in that two -year gap that I had discovered The Western occult tradition that the tarot cards are based on yeah

Tell us a little bit about that and it's connected to your also you said you have the Jewish background growing up And we do know

That is connected to the Kabbalah Was that and those two things kind of work together there a place of identification of getting into that for you?

Well when I was a kid, I just knew about the Torah and so I didn't I didn't know much about that But I I got a tattoo.

I want to say it was like in 2013 and it's on my it's on my left shoulder I can't really show you right now

But it's um, I had I had been to Israel in a birthright Israel trip And for those who don't know birthright

Israel is an all -expense -paid Trip to Israel for 10 a 10 -day tour that's available to all

Jewish boys and girls around the world between the ages of like 18 and 27 so all I had to do was prove that I have

Jewish ancestry and then I can have to get myself to a neat East Coast Airport and then birthright

Israel pays for everything else after that. So I went on a birthright Israel trip while I was there I got a tattoo of an

Israeli flag, right and I didn't like the tattoo. It wasn't a very good tattoo so I got it covered up in 2013 and On on the cover -up.

I had the words tikkun olam, which is a which is a Hebrew phrase meaning to heal the world So I posted that on Facebook in 2013

Like this is this is because it was stuff was going on with Israel So this is what Judaism means to me that post kind of went viral and I someone reached out to me

He's like, hey, have you ever heard of the Kabbalah? I'm like, I've know what it is But a little bit like hey your tattoo has some has some meaning you might want to look into here

You can sign up with this school and study more about the Kabbalah. And so that was a whole area of mysticism

I'd never explored before so I had done all of the Hinduism and all the Buddhism and the Vedanta and explored all that and I had a could grasp on it.

I'd never heard of the Western occult tradition So that's when that's the shadow side of the new age in a way.

So that's when I started exploring that whole world. Hmm Yeah, let me uh, let's do this.

I feel like we this has gotten everyone super intrigued This is the first part of our conversation and at some point we got it

We are cut off so I can produce they help our producers. They're not overwhelmed. So let's do this Let's go ahead and we're gonna be talking more about the

Kabbalah that gap and then we're also going to talk about Further experiences with Burning Man and some of the other things you experience as well traveling your travels.

Yeah, quite a Yes, definitely quite a trip both literally

Both in traveling but also in some of the stuff that you're using what you find out later. It wasn't a good thing

It wasn't that's my dress. I do. Yeah, believe me. Yeah. Anyways, yeah So if you guys have enjoyed this episode with will definitely check that out real quickly

Well, you have a podcast I do tell everyone just real quickly about the podcast where they can find you and what you're and we're in what you're all about So my podcast is called the

Renaissance of men One of the things I've been studying as I mentioned earlier in addition to spirituality was masculinity I've been studying it for 20 years and Helped change my own life by discovering what that meant and I discovered that there are many other men around the world

Asking the same question so I started a podcast to speak to some of these men that are trying to recreate what it means to be a masculine man

And some women that are trying to recreate what it means to be a feminine woman and that helped lead me to Christ And so now my podcast is talking about masculinity

Christianity femininity and that's the Renaissance of men and you can find that by going to link tree slash run of men it's probably the best place to go which they can also keep you all waiting the nature of Masculine feminine that's also directly related to the

New Age in identity Mmm, and how that also affects who we are now in Christ So we're gonna be kind of exploring what you talked about in the podcast

But also in linear like with your testimony and also like how we address in the real world Yeah, we analyze those clips later on of Aubrey Marcus and Aaron Rodgers.

Mm -hmm Oh, I can't wait. That's right If you guys enjoy this episode Comments on our social media and as always a program like this cannot continue without your support all that being said