Security Halt!
Welcome to Security Halt! Podcast, the show dedicated to Veterans, Active Duty Service Members, and First Responders. Hosted by retired Green Beret Deny Caballero, this podcast dives deep into the stories of resilience, triumph, and the unique challenges faced by those who serve.
Through powerful interviews and candid discussions, Security Halt! Podcast highlights vital resources, celebrates success stories, and offers actionable tools to navigate mental health, career transitions, and personal growth.
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Security Halt!
Psychedelics, Pain & Purpose: Diego Ugalde on 5-MeO-DMT, Ego Death, and the Path to Healing
What happens when a Special Operations veteran confronts ego death, suffering, and healing through psychedelics?
In this deeply introspective episode of Security Halt!, host Deny Caballero sits down with Diego Ugalde, who shares his life-changing experiences with 5-MeO-DMT and other psychedelic therapies. Together, they explore the complex and often misunderstood world of plant medicine and its role in unlocking emotional resilience, self-discovery, and personal transformation.
Diego opens up about:
- His initial skepticism and what led him to explore psychedelics
- The powerful lessons he learned about ego, discipline, and common humanity
- Why psychedelics are tools—not cures—for trauma and emotional pain
- How storytelling, integration, and reflection play a role in sustainable healing
- The importance of acceptance, suffering, and embracing pain as a path to growth
This conversation isn’t just about altered states—it’s about finding deeper meaning, breaking generational cycles, and creating space for radical awareness in our daily lives.
If you're curious about how psychedelics intersect with veteran healing, mental health, and personal growth, this episode offers raw, honest insights from someone who’s lived it.
🎙️ Subscribe now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube—and don’t forget to share, rate, and review to help spread this message of healing and hope.
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Chapters
00:00 The Healing Potential of Psychedelics
05:54 Diego's Journey into Psychedelics
12:01 Experiencing 5-MeO-DMT
18:06 Integration and Ego
24:02 Understanding Individual Paths
26:16 The Cycle of Life and Death
29:14 Understanding Common Humanity in Suffering
30:38 The Journey of Self-Discovery through Psychedelics
37:36 The Importance of Discipline and Pain in Growth
39:48 Embracing Suffering and Learning
45:14 Connecting Through Storytelling and Healing
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Tik Tok: @security.halt.pod
LinkedIn: Deny Caballero
Follow Diego on LinkedIn today!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diegougalde/
Website: https://thetridentapproach.com/
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Leading-Deep-Psychedelic-Conscious-Leadership-ebook
Produced by Security Halt Media
Security Odd Podcast. Let's go the only podcast that's purpose-built from the ground up to support you Not just you, but the wider audience, everybody. Authentic, impactful and insightful conversations that serve a purpose to help you. And the quality has gone up. It's decent. It's hosted by me, Danny Caballero. It's decent, it's hosted by me, Denny Caballero. Diego, welcome to Security Hub, brother.
Speaker 1:How are you doing Fantastic Thank you for having me, bro, Absolutely, man. I love finding guys from our soft community that are out there doing remarkable things and take their journey and find a way to bring others back from the brink. Psychedelics is something that is now at the forefront of every warrior and every civilian advocate because it has the potential to save and change lives. But behind these stories and these testaments of healing are people that have gone through some things, and I want to dive into your story, man, not only why you got into psychedelics, but everything.
Speaker 2:You're a coach, tried an approach author and you're doing a lot of big things and I just want to sit down and have your story, but of course, told from you. Thank you, Danny.
Speaker 1:I want to hear more about your story, bro? Well, not today. This is your episode, okay.
Speaker 2:Let's make it our episode, let's see, are there things that you could talk about that your audience has never heard? Let's listen to that, anyway, anyway. So yeah, one thing I do want to talk about really quick. You were talking about how psychedelics have the potential to save lives, where the person that I'm speaking to sometimes is under the impression that some of the things I'm speaking about is semantics, but it's not. There are very thin veils that exist that can keep someone from experiencing what it is that could be experienced. One of those things is something, and it's so subtle that psychedelics can save lives. What exists there is the idea that it is these things that enables or allows, and kind of it is so, but not all the way.
Speaker 2:What psychedelics do, as far as I'm aware, for whatever time I've been involved with them, is they unlock deeper layers of self awareness, and what's important about that is that when one comes to understand that very, very deeply, they can know that it's not the psychedelics that are with who we are. That is the one, essentially, that writes the ship, for example, and I say that because one can be entirely immersed in the world of psychedelics and miss everything and still lose the fight. It isn't the medicine is failing. It isn't that the medicine is incapable or didn't do its job of saving. It is that thin veil of attaching to the idea that it is something external from us that is going to come to the rescue.
Speaker 2:The frustrating thing about that is, for people who are suffering, it's like fuck, dude, I need help, I need it. If this can't do it, then I'm screwed. And, my God in heaven, do I hear you and I'm sending you all the love, bro, and all the hugs and everything, and know that there's a different level of you than you may be aware that exists, that can do this, that is capable, that is ready for this whole brand new path, that is capable, that is ready for this whole brand new path, but it's only because we're disconnected from that one who knows. And the beauty of psychedelics is they are a way to help people connect with the part within them that has always been and that will always be there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up right from the start. It's not a magic wand. Just like any other modality, it's not a magic wand and because of the popularity, because of the success, there's been a lot of people now that want to jump into it without, certainly without the right intention, but without an action plan, without the desires to do all the preparatory work. Um, there's in it and it sucks too, because you hear about the healing that comes, especially when it comes to, um, drug addiction. But then lies the idea that, hey, you have to be sober, we have to get you to stop, and it's like, well, what can I?
Speaker 2:just say Come on Something has come up, I think I might have to miss the ceremony, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:Is you got to get to that point where you're tired of what you're doing and you're willing to take action, you're willing to go into something and find yourself and, for many of us, finally find ourselves getting back into discipline, getting back to a place where we're willing to accept that maybe I have to do some work. Maybe it is part of the equation that I have to surrender and stop putting the emphasis on somebody else. Well, some program is going to work, or somebody else is going to make this stick for me, when the reality is it's us we have to do the work. And how did you find yourself in this space to begin with?
Speaker 2:So I retired in 2018 from the military and then we started a leadership development company coaching executives and corporate teams and and that sharing the best of what we learned in the SEAL teams and combined with emotional intelligence. And then, about a year into operations, one of my pathfinders another former SEAL said man, I'm not coming into work next week. There's an organization that takes SEALs down to Mexico and treats them with psychedelics. They're traumatic brain injury, addiction, pts, all the things and that was the first time I'd ever heard of psychedelics being used in the context of mental health, and to me before then I was like wait a minute, you're talking about Disneyland stuff, right? Music festivals and everything.
Speaker 2:But at the same time I didn't care because I knew he was smacked up pretty good with PTSD. He was addicted to Ambien and depression and the whole thing. So I said, man, I can't wait to see when you get back. And he came back and he had a light in his eyes and a vibrancy to a smile we'd never seen before. I mean, even his skin color was different, like how does it, how did it change of skin color do? And he said, uh, I got no words. It was just life changing and I have to introduce you to these people.
Speaker 2:So not long after that I went. But I went with the intention of observing because in my mind, you know, I didn't have PTS, I wasn't addicted to drugs or alcohol. In my mind I didn't have PTS, I wasn't addicted to drugs or alcohol. In my mind, the life that I was living was kind of as good as it could get. I was happy with my life, happy with my accomplishments and things. Yeah, there were things that got under my skin and all of that, but who doesn't have that stuff? My life is pretty good.
Speaker 2:And so as I went down there to observe, I literally saw them saving lives right out from under my nose and this was something unlike anything else I'd ever heard of or ever experienced anything. And then they turned to me and said hey, man, we got an extra dose, if you want. And watching this transformation, by the way, it was not a peaceful thing Um, it was quite scary, for for someone like myself who wouldn't, who had only ever experienced those noises, for example, or those body contortions attached to negativity somehow. But I knew that these guys that we're going through had all those things that I felt like I missed out on, luckily in life. So I said, well, yeah, it was going to be bad for them, but for me I'm good, I literally have no issues, so let's do it. Plus, I'm not in the Navy, I'm not going to get in your analysis, so I'm not going to get kicked out.
Speaker 2:So I'll be good, let's do it and and man. So this is 5meo DMT.
Speaker 2:it's like the most powerful psychedelic we know of yep, big fan of it in an instant, in an instant dude, everything that I thought about who I am and the world around me was entirely incomplete, like not even close, not even the tip of the iceberg, and it was so much more and I was so much deeper than I ever even knew to even consider. You've already seen those videos where they show you'll start in Los Angeles and then you'll zoom out and then there's the Earth, and then you zoom out and there's like the next biggest planet. Then you zoom out and there's the Sun and all of a sudden the Earth is only this big. And then you zoom out and then there's another bigger star. It just keeps getting bigger.
Speaker 2:It's a video that's trying to do the very best it can to show us how expansive the universe is, because it keeps going to galaxies and things. What I experienced in that 5MEO was that's how deep we are on the inside. That's how big we get, just as big as the universe is outside. That's how big, fast, expansive we are inside. If you don't believe me, talk to one of your cells or the nucleus within yourself. Ask them to one of your cells or the nucleus within yourself.
Speaker 2:Ask them man we're deep, and man I was holding things and man I was pretending, and man I wasn't forgiving, and man I was holding on and man I was doing all this stuff that I just I didn't even know how to forgive, I didn't know how to let go, I didn't know who I was, I didn't know all these things. But the difficult thing is, or a difficult thing is, you have conversations and you're like bro, you realize you're on drugs, right, like man. All I can tell you is I've never known truth until I've seen it through the lens of elevated states of consciousness. Yeah.
Speaker 2:This to me. This is what I'm choosing to align with my deepest possible connection to the asset, to the idea of truth, is here, but not here on earth. Me thinking that's not true is, yeah, powerful. So that's how I found psychedelics, yeah, or? They found me, I should say exactly that, the um I.
Speaker 1:I waited a really long time and with everything that I talk, talk about or advocate if I share it on the show nine times out of tens, because I've I've have direct experience with it whether it's a nonprofit that I'm sharing, like Mission 22, I'm sorry, 22 to 0, mission 22, like all these things I have had either close friends or people that I know have gone in there that have seen a change in their lives. Same things for when I talk about EMDR, things that have worked for me with anxiety and depression, ptsd, all things that I've dove into and experienced firsthand. And my experience with 5-MeO DMT was life-changing and understanding it and advocating from a point of having experienced it. When I look back, it's something that I am grateful that I waited a long time and I went through every other modality and I didn't realize how much more I was going to be getting from the experience, because I thought I've overcome so much and I I do have some things I want I want to work on.
Speaker 1:I had an intention and what the medicine showed me was completely, just completely different than my intention, and that's the beauty of it. Like the medicine speaks to you, it's not something where you may think that you're going to go in there and experience. I want to talk about this trauma. I want to experience something that's going to help me work through this and it's great to have the intention but understanding that you're going into something that is completely different than anything known to modern medicine and the experience is unique to you. I have talked with a lot of people and there may be some similarities and sensations and feelings, but the journey itself is I've yet to meet somebody that had anything closely resemble and exactly to what I've experienced. That's the beauty of it. It shows you what you need to see, what you need to experience and again, it's all within you. It's not somebody else's hero's journey, it's yours. And when going through your journey, what was it like going back home after experiencing that?
Speaker 2:Oh, I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I was like I sat my wife down at the time, sat my daughter down and I'm like you guys, you know I just well, mostly I I felt really open and free to talk about it because I didn't think any one of them either, one of them, well, certainly my, my wife at the time. I was like she's never going to do this, so I can talk all I want, and I was secretly hoping that my daughter would one day choose to try this because what I experienced and, man, if she could learn the stuff that I learned at that one time at a younger age, like whoa.
Speaker 3:But secretly on her side, she was already doing this stuff, she's like dad, you're an amateur.
Speaker 2:I've been exploring this medicine for a while now yeah, she's like okay, yeah, it's so funny, but uh, what I did? Because I did. I mean I was playing. Literally I was playing in Candy Crush five minutes before I was doing 5MEO. I didn't.
Speaker 2:I didn't do any preparation, I didn't have any coaching, I didn't do anything with my diet Like I didn't do anything I was living Diego's life all the way up until the moment, which I think kind of helped me, because I didn't know what I was looking for. I didn't have any idea about the idea of resistance or attachment or expectation versus intentions. I didn't know anything about any of that, or attachment or expectation Versus intentions. I didn't know anything about any of that, and so it was almost like just getting kicked out of the plane.
Speaker 2:And it's like, okay, I am in free fall and so I actually experienced everything that I hear people talking about experience like the highest, highest, highest potential experience possible on 5MEO. I got that the first time All that oneness, there is no self, only love. I got it all Healing, letting go everything and so I came home with the illusion. Oh, and, by the way, I didn't have any coaching after that either, so I'm just you're just raw dogging, the existential dogging bro and.
Speaker 2:I thought I was saved. You know, and you know, and you know, trying to pick out the best possible soapbox that I can stand on top of to tell the world what they should be doing. Because I know now, like I'm the one who knows, and what I didn't realize was that I had been unwittingly launched into the most powerful journey, I guess, maybe, of coming to understand my ego that I could possibly imagine. It was a huge, but I didn't know it at the time, so my ego was on fire. You guys, guess what I know, guess what I did, guess what I know how to do now, guess what I healed from.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, I can be your teacher, because teaching is within me. It's something that I feel like I might have been doing, maybe, maybe for thousands of lifetimes. Yeah, I've been teaching for a long time, and so it's almost like my I mean a long time and so it's, it's my default mode mechanism to learn something, or how do I teach this, which I wouldn't say is anything, it just is, and what it does is it prevents me from learning as the student. It's like what can I learn so that I can teach instead of what can I learn so that I am learning? Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that, instead of what can I learn so that I am learning? And even that took me years and years and years, because I would experience something like how do I help someone understand this? And it's like dude, that's you Like, stop trying to teach man, learn, bro, learn. And I'm like, okay, okay, okay, okay, this is for me. But how would I say that? You know, just incessant, just working, trying to figure out, trying to do it just never stops, never stops. Well, it didn't stop, and I feel like it's, at the very least, very much slowed down these days, but who knows? So anyway, yeah, that's what I did. I just kept talking about it as though I knew, I kept talking about it as though I understood, I kept talking as though people needed to listen, and this was the way for the world. And that lasted like two years maybe, before I learned, or learned more, I should say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's an incredible journey to dive into this world and to study it and be able to advocate for it. And where did that take you? Where have you been able to go with this message?
Speaker 2:Deeper and deeper and deeper levels of inside of me, or all that is. All that is, which has brought me to a place where my environment, the bubble that I've created for myself in my life, is more peaceful. It's more accepting. That's not just me, it is the people who are now part of this community that I now allow within and close to me are more peaceful, more accepting, more loving. They don't care about politics, they don't care about left and right, about politics. They don't care about left and right, and therefore my life and my environment is much more vibrant and just, free of all the not of all of it. It's there, it exists, but it's not the way it used to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it helps us sort of navigate life and be able to attract the right people and as a process of that, you kind of walk away from individuals that aren't on the same level, yeah, but and I hear you about the same level thing, but there's like a connotation with a higher and a lower, and when I hear about it in those terms, well, that can't be it.
Speaker 2:One of the things that this medicine has done, or at least the integration of the medicine has done for me, is learning very, very, very, very deeply I don't know about deeply, but much deeper than I ever knew of the idea that everybody's on their own path. I've heard those words forever. I've heard those words forever, I've said those words forever that people really, really, really are on their own path and there's nothing wrong with anyone's path. It is theirs, it is what they need, it is for them, and so, in that way, there cannot be a higher or lower, it just is. I can resonate one way or the other with someone who is, I'd say, addicted to killing people, like that's their addiction.
Speaker 2:Yeah like that's their addiction. Yeah, it would feel a certain way. That is almost like two magnets but opposing sides. You know, repulsion is what it is, but there is something there for a reason that I may not even and most likely won't ever be able to comprehend. And I can be in the room with somebody who's just super amazing at hugging people and then boom, it's like the magnets turn the right way or this way, not the right way, this way, and we're like this. And then I'm farther and farther away, I get from the repulsion, and then the closer and closer I get with the energetic alignment. Energetic alignment, as far as I can tell, there is no as far as I can tell. I could be wrong. We'll just say I'm wrong.
Speaker 2:But where I'm at right now is there is no good or bad in the universe. It just is, and it's the mind that attaches good or bad to anything. I saw this video of Buddhists after and I'm talking about like in the deep in the mountains like those Buddhists, yeah, after somebody dies, they like hack that person's bodies to pieces and they give it to like the buzzards and stuff. And when you look at this video it's like what it's, it's it's 10 times more than any movie, because it's actually happening.
Speaker 2:But they are so in alignment with the body is just this thing the soul of who we are is the life essence, and that has now gone from that body. And now that body is just a bag of bones and meat, it's just. And so they're giving it to the brothers for circle of life type of thing. If I saw that as an American I'd be like we are going to call the cops, like that's bad, but for them they're just what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. They are in absolute, for themselves, in entirely in alignment with the cycle of life, with all of nature. So it's just my mind that attaches good and bad to anything. And another way that I used to explain this sometimes if an asteroid hit the earth and just obliterated all life all like in an instant, the universe would not be like what the fuck did I do it? It wouldn't matter, it would just be wow. And then things would continue cycling throughout, attached to a part of the asteroid belt, maybe collide with the moon a little bit, or whatever. It just keeps going and there is no anything, it just is. And in that way, when I sit in stillness, I can more easily accept all the paths that are happening anyway as they are, and that I certainly am not higher than one. That can only be the ego thinking that it's like I'm the one blip in the universe.
Speaker 1:That's just a little bit, a little bit higher well that that way of thinking helps us understand common humanity a lot faster. Like when we're suffering, we tend to think that I'm the only one suffering. This sucks, this is miserable. I'm the only one dealing. This sucks, this is miserable. I'm the only one dealing with this right now, in this moment. I am just. This is all. The only thing I can focus on is just pain. This is just depression, this anxiety. But if you just open up that aperture and look outward and understand that, like right now, across the world, there are thousands of people suffering from the same things, somebody is. If you're going through having lost your job, if you've lost money because of the economy isn't doing well, like you're not the only person. Open up that aperture and understand like okay, I am not unique in this. Suffering Like this will pass, this will dissipate. Others are out there suffering just like me, and it allows us to understand that like, okay, like I'm not alone in this moment. This might suck, this moment right now, but it'll dissipate and I think this the awareness that you can get, you can come across and and receive as a gift, as a byproduct.
Speaker 1:Going through an experience like 5meo dmt is a great gift, but it doesn't just stay. It's not something that lasts forever and it does have to be. You do have to cultivate and you do have to have a set of tools to continue living and get and have that gift a little longer, that ability to like, stay present and be aware of this great change. Because, let me tell you, I felt great for three, four months. All the negativity, all the bad habits I had, it was just like fuck, I don't need that. I can see that ugly part of myself.
Speaker 1:I remember seeing you. You're not there and then, just as fast as we humans tend to forget, it slowly goes away and you're like, oh fuck, my superpower, it's gone, damn it. You have to work. It's something that you have to continue working on. It's a great gift, but it's not the end. All be all. And in your experience did you find yourself waking up and being like, oh, wait, a second, I need to work on these habits. I need to work on this great, you know, awakening that I have?
Speaker 2:The second time I did Ibogaine, I didn't make any, I wasn't even trying to trick it. I was like you need to do this, you need not me. You, Ib, have a game you need, you need, I'm done, I'm spent. I think I've done 5MEO, maybe four or five times. I did Ibogaine once. So I had some kind of some sort of psychedelic awareness for whatever it was. But I was like you need to do this, I'm exhausted, because the first time I went to Ibogaine it was it was a.
Speaker 2:Coliseum, just me and my ego. And it was fucking brutal man and I didn't understand how there could be something like that within me, like something so capable of so much evil and so much anger, because it was so conflicting to my state of being. I didn't outwardly express myself as an evil human, I just didn't understand it. I wasn't evil but I didn't. Well, part of me is I just couldn't accept that. Number one, because it's not allowed. And then number two, it's how I'm choosing to show up to the world. And so of course, I had a lot of lessons to learn there about just letting myself be as I am and resistance and everything.
Speaker 2:But you know, like nine months or so had gone between my Ibogaine journeys, months or so had been had gone between my Ibogaine journeys and after getting just cosmically whipped for 16 hours with this thing and then not having coaching after that didn't have coach for that either and just trying to navigate this thing, I had like this it's not true, I don't think it's true, but I just had like you know, it's not true, I don't think it's true but I had, like you know, almost like the equivalent of spiritual exhaustion. Hmm, I was like not only help me, but do this for me. It's so funny now it's like okay well, man, it's just what it?
Speaker 2:was dude this one time I saw. I was stationed in germany for like three and a half years and at one time we were some bunch of friends, we rented this yacht and we went around croatia in the mediterranean sea just unbelievable right. It was like this really posh thing which was strange for our type of income kind of folk. Yeah, and I just remember sitting there one time in like the little, the netted trampoline in front and I was like god, somebody, do something for me. And it was. We all just started laughing like somebody bring me a drink or something, rub my feet, like this is, this is how I'm going to live from now on, life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in a in, in a really manic kind of mental, unstable way, I did the same thing that I began like dude, like do this, I have no strength left, which was totally not true. It was just the way I felt at the time. And, ibogaine being Ibogaine, they call it the grandfather because of its patriarchal energy. It's like the kind of lover if you don't know how to swim, it throws you in the middle of the because of its patriarchal energy. It's like the kind of love where, if you don't know how to swim, it throws you in the middle of the lake and say, hey, man, figure it out, figure it out. I think it's like, oh, you need wait, say it one more time, you need say you need me to do it, okay, okay. And then, bam, another 16 hours of like what do you? Okay, okay. I'll do it. I'll do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, medicine comes with gloves.
Speaker 2:Dude, ibogaine's an evil? Well, it does. I've met, I've talked to, many people who are like, oh my God, that's the most beautiful experience ever. I'm like what the what this is? No, no clue what they're talking about. But uh, ibogaine for me. Everyone has different relationships with different medicines. It seems like to me, and the relationship that I have with Ibogaine is it's there and it's gives me powerful, powerful, powerful things. All I can ask for, and there's powerful things.
Speaker 2:All I could ask for. And there's not a nurturing bone within it, it's just pow.
Speaker 2:And it just sits there and it's like it's no emotion, no anger, no anger, no happiness, no, nothing, just boom. You still haven't learned, you still haven't learned, you still haven't learned. And it's not angry and it's not impatient, it's as patient. It's the most patient thing I've ever seen of me not learning lessons and it just continuing to show me the lessons. Meanwhile I'm missing a tooth, I'm missing a finger, I'm missing a freaking earlobe, like it's just kicking the shit out of me, but not with anger. It's like oh, you still haven't learned. Oh, okay, you still haven't learned which?
Speaker 2:I have an entirely different relationship with ayahuasca ayahuasca like yo come here, dude, I'm all sucking my thumb like let me nurture you better.
Speaker 1:Yeah and sometimes that's what we need. That's the reality.
Speaker 1:Yep, sometimes not on my terms yeah, yeah, that's, that's exactly it that we. We want things to be easy to be given to us, so the answers is just to reveal ourselves for the pathway to not include discipline, to be easy. But that couldn't be further from the truth. The greatest things that that god and his infinite wisdom has given us is to understand that there's beauty in the discipline and in the pain, like the greatest things in your life, often enough require years of pain. Like, think of it.
Speaker 1:Like selection processes what you went through to become a SEAL, what I went through to become a Green Beret, what you, at home, went through to get into the military, to become a paratrooper, become a sapper, whatever you've worked hard for in life, require discipline and pain. And that moment, that brief moment of oh man, I made it. Then comes a whole lot more pain and a whole lot more discipline. We can only just pause and just realize that the path ahead, the path to true freedom, the path to being the best version of ourselves, require that we put down the ice cream, we put down the soda, we put down the Netflix and we pick up some discipline again. We tell ourselves that, no, I'm not going to sit on the couch today. I'm going to get out, I'm going to do something, or I'm going to stop neglecting and avoiding these mental health issues that I'm dealing with and I'm going to ask for help. It requires work.
Speaker 1:None of us can get out of this life by just sitting back. I mean, yeah, you could just sit in comfort all day, but you're not going to get the life that you wish. It requires work, and that's what the medicine truly like when you break it down to the basic blocks. It requires you to be faced with the truth. You have a grand experience and now you have to do the work.
Speaker 2:Which is hard. Why would I accept life not on my terms? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Good luck for that one man how does it feel to be on the other side of this journey and now be able to usher other people from from vast different communities towards healing, to champion it?
Speaker 2:it's just lighter. It's just lighter. It's not that I don't suffer, it's just what I do, and it's enough to where it's causing me to slow down and take notice. It's enough to where it's causing me to slow down and take notice. It's like, oh, I am learning, no matter what, no matter what this is, whether it's heartbreak or the illusion of heartbreak, or the illusion of being alone, or the illusion of alone, or the illusion of I need to do something, otherwise everything's going to go to shit.
Speaker 2:When I'm suffering in that way, then it's just, oh, this, okay, allow it, allow it, allow it reconnect with what is. And then it goes, just like everything goes, just like peace of mind comes and goes. And when I'm so, where I'm at now is when I am in peace of mind. And I notice, I'm noticing that I'm in peace of mind and less and less attached to okay, how long can we stay here? It's not that anymore, what you used to be. It's just oh, peace of mind. And now, when something within me expresses itself and I'm no longer in a state of peace of mind, even experiencing suffering, I'm no longer. What do I need to do to bring myself back to normal? It's just, suffering is being experienced and there's more learning to do.
Speaker 2:I'm keeping curiosity open to see what can be learned, and the only, the only permanent is change itself. So I don't have to worry myself of whether or not I will always be light and vibrant and at peace. I don't have to worry about that because I already know the answer Not for long. And the same is true that when I'm suffering, I don't have to worry that it's always going to be this way. Not for long. It just comes and goes and I don't need to change it. It feels that way I could be in the spiritual bypass for all I know and just being like, oh, this is where I'm at. But so far it just feels like when I am suffering. There is recognition that it's happening, that suffering is being experienced, trying to keep my eyes open for what I could possibly learn, just letting it be. And there's still more to go, and there's still more to go and there's still more to learn, and it's all right.
Speaker 2:And then what's it like to be this way, as others are moving in and out of my life on their own paths, and to hold this kind of space for them? Is it's powerful because there are people that are coming from where I came from just absolute disconnection from who I really am, not understanding the mind, not being able to be present, not experiencing self-love, and then learning little things just by being in the same space together on their own, what love even is, what presence even is, what the mind is, who they really really are. And because we're all connected and I definitely connect with people like right now I'm connected with you, like I can feel you and I can feel them, and when I feel them leaving things behind that they don't need, it's like and I have time with them too.
Speaker 2:So it's this this process, this process, this process, this process, and then they come in and out of my life and then they leave my life and they go on doing whatever it is. But I'm just really, uh, something I don't feel other. It's something else other than I feel really good to be part or connected to that. There's something else to than I feel really good to be part or connected to that. There's something else to that it's um. Well, there's gratitude for sure, because it is my path, and the reason why I know it is my path is because it continually, continually, continually happens with absolute ease, not to go like knocking down people's door. Hey, do you know what I do for a little? It's not, it's just I just stay here and they come and they go, and it's really cool yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:It's a beautiful thing when the universe is uh aligned and you are listening and your path is right there in front of you. It's like, okay, this is my purpose, this is me, it's what I do. Well, diego, what's uh, what's next for you? What's in, uh, what's in the rear view mirror? What's in the forefront? What do you got going on these days?
Speaker 2:it's funny, it doesn't seem like any of that is in the room at all, and I don't mean to be like oh, that's essential, like all the time is happening all at once, but all that stuff is still really part of what's happening now. To me it seems like and for me in all of this, because everything that I do these days is somehow connected to coaching, somehow, um, because everything that I do these days is somehow connected to coaching Somehow. Yeah, so it feels like the Seals, for example. That feels like rear view I live really close to.
Speaker 2:Well, I live close to like a main thoroughfare of where people the road that they take to go on base and for about a year after I got out. I used to just laugh at people.
Speaker 2:I'd see stop at a red light in their camouflage uniforms on the way to work in the morning and be like, ah, I know what you're about to do and I don't even notice it anymore. Like it's just people ask me stuff about the military. I'm like, hmm, did you see Lord of the Rings where Gandalf the Grey becomes Gandalf the White? Yes, and they ask him like, hey, gandalf the Grey. He's like, hmm, gandalf the Grey, oh yeah, I remember that dude. Like that's how I feel in the SEAL teams like you're a SEAL oh, yeah, I feel you on that.
Speaker 2:I did that what we're doing now is we've expanded coaching into storytelling, so to help veterans and first responders learn how to tell their stories in alignment with truth, because I know that there are so many veterans who get a lot of accolades and attention and and what they're experiencing is love from telling these really, really powerful stories but they but there's a sense within them they feel like they can't tell that story one more time because it's just, I just can't tell that story one more time, and what that is.
Speaker 2:And the only reason that exists is because that story one more time, and what that is, and the only reason that exists is because that story is misaligned with what it is. It's connected to some sort of illusion of egoic attachment shame, anger, whatever it is and so if we can help veterans and first responders understand that, if you're telling a story that's harming you, then there's still more to learn. Like, that story has not been written entirely yet. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That you can come to understand truth. Because, no matter what you've been through, no matter and this is hard for people to accept or wrap their heads around no matter what you've been through, no matter what Yep, even that Yep and that, yes, that other thing too no matter what you have been through, if you step fully and experience fully and allow that thing to fully heal and you transcend it, it is that which has given you the power of transcendence that you have as a human. It is because of these stories that we are as strong as we are, that we've learned as much as we have learned, and in that way, there is no getting over telling that story, because every time you tell that story you get stronger and stronger and you heal more and you get more vibrant and your light grows and all these things. And so it's not faking until you make it, it's not spiritual bypass, it is powerfully, powerfully, coming into deep connection with the actual transcendent.
Speaker 2:That happened because of the struggle itself and learning how to tell those stories really powerfully. So it's an awesome thing that we're doing. I love it. It's called Warrior Side and we just started. We've had a couple of performances and we are we're continuing on. We have shows in Denver in the middle of June, we're going to have training cohorts in San Diego in July, in Boston and New York in September and then we're going to have a big, gigantic performance in New York City in December. Oh wow.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's going to be awesome.
Speaker 1:Dude I can't thank you enough for coming on, man. It's been awesome chatting with you. Um, people want to get a hold of you or check out what you're doing with trident approach. Where can they go?
Speaker 2:linkedin is where I spend most of my social media efforts. I guess we'll say it's not that much, I don't spend a lot of time, but that that's where. Uh, that's, that's where they can find. So yeah, like the straight coaching, nothing to do with storytelling, that's the Trident approach. Storytelling, or healing through your story, that's warrior side. So the Trident approach is the, the tridentapproachcom, all three words. And warrior side is just warriors sideorg and oh, if you have a ton of money and you don't know what they're doing it. Warrior side is a nonprofit and uh, so far I've come out of pocket for that. So if you wouldn't mind opening up, that'd be super bad-ass. Tax-free, secure all that stuff. Just go to warrior sideorg and you'll see you'll see how to donate.
Speaker 2:And, um yeah, while I'm sitting here plugging myself, I uh. So we wrote the book, uh, leading from the deep, and they've sealed psychedelic approach to conscious leadership. And now we're writing the second book which goes into this healing from the deep. So it's just healing beyond the thinking, mind and traditional Western approach to medicine.
Speaker 1:Hell, yeah, if you pause right now, go to episode description. You'll see links to all those awesome things right there. Go ahead and give them a click. Support Diego, support what he's doing both at Trident Approach and the Warriors. One more time Warrior side, the Warriors side. Especially if you have some extra money and you want to help a nonprofit grow and expand its base, I know Diego would greatly appreciate it. I can't thank you enough for being on here, brother, and to everybody at home listening, thank you so much for being here. We'll see you all next time. Until then, take care.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in and don't forget to like, follow, share, subscribe and review us on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to support us, head on over to buymeacoffeecom. Forward slash SecHawk podcast. Buy us a coffee, connect with us on Instagram, x or TikTok and share your thoughts or questions about today's episode. You can also visit securityhawkcom for exclusive content, resources and updates. And remember we get through this together. If you're still listening, the episode's over. Yeah, there's no more Tune in tomorrow or next week. Thank you.
