What If I Stopped Saying No to Myself? w/ Karlee Ana (#184)

We are joined by Karlee Ana, host of The Big Seen Podcast! We delve into the intricacies of spiritual awakening, the challenges of navigating personal intuition, and the tension between ego and higher self, including: 

Key Takeaways:

• Spiritual Awakening: Karlee shares her intense spiritual experiences that began with a seemingly random event and evolved into a life-altering journey, highlighting the power of trusting the unknown.
• Intuition vs. Ego: The hosts discuss how to differentiate between the voice of the higher self and the ego, exploring the idea that true guidance often feels undeniable and comes from a place of deep inner knowing.
• Impact of Religious Conditioning: Mike and Doug reflect on how their Mormon upbringing continues to influence their ability to connect with their true selves, despite years of separation from the religion.
• Karlee's European Adventure: A spontaneous trip to Europe becomes a metaphorical and literal journey for Karlee, leading her to a place she envisioned in meditation and ultimately deciding to move there.

This episode offers a deep dive into the complexities of personal transformation and the courage it takes to follow one's true path.

Transcript

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sometimes want to use pseudonyms or fake names or when Mike and I first started the podcast, we actually had fake names and they lasted about eight minutes into our first episode and we just, and then we just started calling each other by our regular name, like our real names. Remember that Mike? Yeah, we were going to call each other Walter and Jesse. Walter and Jesse. I actually think we did. We recorded an episode like that, but it was the first time we had a guest on when Shalice was on that. It ended up being our first episode. We were on Zoom and it said Doug and Mike. Yeah, that's right. And so from there, it's just Doug and Mike. man. But who knows those might not be our real names. Hoot yah, right. wouldn't you all motherfuckers like to know what our real names are? We've been doing this for four and a half years and you don't know our real names. What up, dawg? tell. Not even tell. They were never even Mormons. Hey, I do have to start this off. I do have an announcement. You all ready for an announcement? Yep. Announcement announcement. I am supposed to be getting a vasectomy tomorrow. HUUUU my gosh. No. Congratulations on behalf of everyone. I'm sure that you know. yes. Yeah. The whole world has actually been encouraging it. They've been like, we could use less. We could use less dugs going around, but, my doctor got hurt and has to have like actual surgery, like real fucking surgery. And so my vasectomy has been put off for a couple of months. So, if I seem, if I seem a little more energetic than you expected, if I seem a little full of, of like, virility, it's because I'm hanging on to the vestiges of not having a vasectomy for the next couple of months. So, thank you. That's right, that's right. take forth their energy as much as you can. Fuck yeah. Doug, had, for a second, years ago and I had complications not to scare you. Dude, what kind of complications? Well, so they have to like pull out the vas deferens. I think that's what it's called, vas deferens or something, and then cut them, right? For some reason on one side, on my left side, he couldn't find mine. He was just like digging away. And like even with the anesthesia, I could just feel him just like digging in there. Finally, he gets it. And like I had... Like I was just ballooned up for a couple of weeks and in two places, like it was, it was bad. And I still have like phantom pain, especially when I get on like psychedelics or something or like some, know, just like a little bit of, sometimes I'll be like, my gosh, I've got like a phantom pain there. Yeah. Yeah. real, that's what I need to work through that mic. Feel all that pain in your balls, let it happen. There's been times where I just gotta feel it. If I just keep feeling it, eventually it'll just like move through. And maybe it does sometimes, I don't know, but like, yeah, it's still kind of a deal, but like, that's rare, dog. It won't happen to you. better not my the dude that does that my doctor is my homeboy so he better not be digging around trying to find the left side of my vast deference so for those of you listening at home you might have heard a third voice and that voice is okay Carly I'm gonna just call you Carly but should I call you what what should I call you low -key Carly okay okay there's car Carly Loki Carly is like like the side hustle like she's like that Yeah Yeah Fair enough. So maybe Carly, people listening know me and Mike, but maybe you could tell us who the fuck are you? Who are you? Yeah. Alright, I know we have cameras on. I am gonna turn my camera off so I feel like we're on the phone. And that will make it better for me. I am currently in a cemetery. Yes. Yes I am. I love this. I've always wanted to do a podcast episode in a cemetery. mean, yeah, like. It's recommended. It's recommended. It's very peaceful, very quiet. All right, well, let's invite all those ghosts in with you and you can tell us a little bit about yourself. Wonderful. Okay, so here's me. Hello, I'm Carly. Raised in Utah, born in Idaho, spent most of my life in Utah though. I grew up Mormon, hence what brings us here today. Mushrooms are a little bit later down the line, but I kind of grew up throughout Utah. So I like to tell people I got a pretty good idea of the gist of how it actually goes down here. I didn't just kind of stay in one neighborhood. I went from Farmington to Caysville to Bountiful to Centerville to Lehigh to Alpine to American Fork and now I've been in Salt Lake for the last six years and I call this place just like the holy bubble where you don't see a lot of Mormons, you see all the people that kind of fled from the suburbs and that come to Utah from out of state and can't quite fully exist anywhere else and I've absolutely loved being here. I so much want to, what part of Idaho? I have, you know, I live in Idaho. Yes, yes, I was born in Boise. Right on, I love Boise, okay. So, please go ahead. I was gonna say I was only there until I was about one and then I moved. So I've been in Utah my whole cognizant life. on. So I know when we got you on, like, hey, just drop into the conversation. This isn't gonna be a typical like question and answer type podcast, but I have questions. Well, I mean, cause I think you'd reached out once, we had just released that episode, Confessions of an Ex -Mormon Sex Worker with V. And I posted it on our story and then you. I think you responded or you sent us a DM and saying, I, by the way, I grew up Mormon. Yes.-hmm. Yep. And I think that's how it was, if I remember correctly. That is how it was. And when was that? Back in... winter. A year ago maybe? Not quite a year. mean, I don't think that episode has been out for a year, but like earlier this year, like January, maybe December or something. Yeah. So it's been a minute. Yeah. It's been a minute. We've been trying to get you on ever since. So it's been a long time coming, I, just to kind of frame this conversation, what was your like, what was your experience like being Mormon? So my experience being Mormon. I would say my experience being Mormon was a little bit different from a lot of people that I feel like I grew up around where I never quite got myself to believe it. I always tell people I quote unquote left the church at age 10. But really that's just kind of when I got fed up with no longer getting answers. I think, you know, when you're a kid, oops. years, sorry, you're only two years removed from making the decision to be baptized. sorry, you broke up there for just a second. What was that? I was just making a joke that it was just two years after you made the decision at eight years old to be baptized. Right? Exactly. Exactly. I actually just told my mom this not even I think two weeks ago and it made her cry. Speaking of baptisms, but I told her when I was eight years old and I got baptized, you know, in primary you grow up and they drill it into your brain that when you get baptized, you're going to get the gift of the Holy Ghost and he's going to move in to your heart and bring his bags and you guys are to be able to like have intimate conversations. He's going to be able to talk to you. and all of these things. And I remember I pictured him as the bubble man from SpongeBob with the top hat and the briefcase. And I remember like sitting in primary in my little seat and like getting this lesson that if you didn't do, you know, A, B or C, that the Holy Ghost would literally pack his bags and move out of your heart. And that is what I pictured was the bubble man leaving me and Hahaha would look like, know, what the relationship between us was gonna be, if there was gonna be sparks or whatever, but I knew there was gonna be one and I was very excited. And then I get baptized, do the whole thing, have my whole day. And I remember going into my bedroom alone, you know, after the whole day of being around people, everyone's so excited for you, so excited for this gift that you've been given. And I sat on my bed, like eager and ready and waiting for my alone time with the Holy Ghost. Ready to - I had my hair braided all special. you're in the bridal suite waiting for the Holy Ghost to come. was literally waiting for him to come in and like start unpacking his suitcase and get to know me and I just sat there and sat there and like an hour or two which might as well have been three lifetimes go by and yeah I remember just sitting and looking at my feet and just wondering what I had what could I have possibly done wrong in the span of today like from from dipping in the water from the festivities at eight years old. think about an eight year old, eight years old feeling that way. Like what did I do wrong between being baptized and right now while I'm sitting here waiting? What have I done wrong? mean, that's like a, that's kind of a trip. You're saying something that is like stirring like a memory in me and I can't really quite remember. remember the whole thing about how it's like, they make a big deal about it's the gift of the Holy Ghost, not the, Presence of the Holy Ghost. that like a whole thing? Did you guys have to go through that whole thing? it's like, remember boys and girls, you're getting the gift of the Holy Ghost. Because it was a, the word was like presidents and it was like presidents, but it wasn't president. It was like a weird word that I'm like, they shouldn't be teaching this to kids. We don't know what this means. What is presidents? they make a whole thing about like, it's not, it's not presence. It's not. So, you know, then your, your, your eight year old brain is going into like gifts, presence. I'll take what I can get. Come on now. But like they do, they make a whole thing about like, you're getting the gift of the Holy ghost, but you have to remain worthy for the, for the actual presence of the Holy ghost. Is that a thing or am I making that shit up? I might be making that up. no, that is ringing bells. Cause I remember also sitting and getting that talk and being and not understanding the word. I still, can't Like that you, yeah, I still don't understand the concept, but you know, they just sent it out in an email and every church on the planet did the same lesson that Sunday probably. So there's that. That shit's been around since... I mean, don't want to date me and Mike, but we got baptized in the 80s. That's alright. The late eighties, the way, for those. Fair enough. sorry, I had to clear my throat there, but it's interesting how deep this shit goes. And maybe Carly, this kind of, spins us into, cause I think when we were chatting earlier this week, we wanted to kind of talk about like, well, I don't know, we'll get there, but self and connecting to the self and stuff. like, even, even recently in my last therapy session, I was walking through a dream and in the dream, it was this feeling like if I, because I did something wrong, I wouldn't be able to connect with this part of myself. anymore that I'd done something and betrayed this part of myself and now this part of myself won't connect with me anymore. And I'm just thinking of that. Well, of course that runs deep at eight years old. I mean, because that's what it is. The Holy Ghost is your intuition. It's a still small voice you listen to when you're meditating or on plant medicine or just walking throughout the day and just trusting your gut. And they separate you from that and tell you, you have to be worthy to feel that, to feel this part of you. And here I am. So I will date myself here. am at 44 years old. So it's been 30, I handed about 36 years since I've been baptized. And I still am struggling with this concept that I need to live a certain way in order to connect with me. my gosh, is my absolute tyranny on my life right now. Absolute tyranny of with that in the self and this inner voice and knowing that that's already there predisposed inside of you and it is unconditional and it is unpunishing. It is only there to love you and to guide you. And then trying to figure out which voice is that real voice. through again, think being so indoctrinated. sorry, did I just break up? sorry. With like, your only salvation and your only happiness is going to come from an exterior source that you have to essentially lay down all of your autonomy for. And you have to do it with grace and with happiness and with a smile on your face. in the midst of an understanding, will you find your answer? And I think I've been going through kind of this big spiritual journey this last year and something that's been so upsetting for me, I don't know how well you two will relate to this, but I feel like going through an actual spiritual awakening and journey, I have realized how close, how sickeningly close Mormonism is on that line of being so close to actual genuine spirituality. you. all of the best parts and just slightly twisted it into the wrong thing. So that for me as, yeah, so that for me is like a what, recovering Mormon. Even though I never really believed in the church or gave it my all, I've seen enough people who've given it their all and have crashed and burned. And in this whole discovering self thing, I realized how much, you know, 10 years, I was still a kid, but. All of that was still getting drilled into me every Sunday. All my neighbors, everybody in the same community, we're all learning the same thing on that same frequency. I had no idea that even though I didn't believe in something for myself, how much it could come up in my adult life and ring true for me, even though I never agreed to it. I find that to be very odd. So in this time that I'm in right now of like struggling with this self and with looking... for this intuition and in the coexistence of those two, of myself and this other, and the perspective of the vice versa. And it's been so hard for me to hold the truth... sorry. Where did you lose me? shoot. the perspective, you say you're this perspective of and then you kind of and you kind of went blank for a minute there. shoot, sorry about that. shoot, I forgot my track, but essentially - you're talking about that perspective of of trying to I guess I think you're talking about like identifying what's yours and what's external. Right. You're talking about that intuition part. Right, and like knowing that there is a reaching and there is a listening and there is a silence and a hope and a belief, but if that is not compartmentalized and compacted into something that can be utilized specifically, it's going to go absolutely nowhere. And I think everyone is starving for direction and for reason. and for peace. And I think where Mormonism gets me upset is the best word is just knowing that they've taken a concept that is so beautiful and so fragile in that. And they've taken a chunk and essentially glass blown it and heated it up and turned it into something different. And it's so, so, so close. Like all of the messages of Mormonism. I've been realizing this. are so close to the real thing. So of course it lights people up. Of course, like, everything is so close, but it's just the only problem is that it teaches you that what you're supposed to be looking for and how you're going to find it is listed in a forever set of rules that will never change. And if you find those things, you'll get them. And I think... starting at eight years old, you follow all these rules, even though you don't even know you're following the rules, and you think you're gonna get something, and you don't, no matter what it is. I think from that moment on, whether you realize it or not, because I didn't even really fully believe it, but I wanted to, because you're a kid and you want to believe, you know? But I think from that moment on, it just kind of sparks that question of, well, I don't know. All of the questions. Yeah, I mean, that's it's interesting that this is coming up so early in the conversation because it's it's right in line with I just finished this book called The Mountain is You. And I can't remember the name of the lady who wrote it, but it's a great book. I would recommend anybody out there read it. But it kind of goes along this. She does talk about, you know, we are I mean, mean, the whole point of the book is essentially like. We are our own stumbling block a lot of times. then she uses examples of things like third party spirituality, you know, where we basically create a middleman in the situation we're talking about. We call it the Holy Ghost, you know, where we're creating this middleman conduit to the divine. But then she also talks about how New Age, we call it Intuition and she's like intuition is this great thing and our gut, know, she talks about how it's like you talk about it being like, I got a gut feeling. She's like, well, there is a correlation between our gut bacteria and our brains. But she's like, also, that can be misleading because everyone's intuition is the sum of the parts of their life experience of how to keep themselves safe. And so, know, Mike, I think we talk we talk on this podcast. We've had people on the podcast talk about the power of intuition. And she's not discounting in this book. She's not discounting intuition, but she's also making the point that we can leave the door open for our intuition simply being an extension of our trauma response, of what we have learned, what what what dangers to look out for, what stimuli to look out for. that give us that still small voice or that gut feeling or that deep reaction. And she's like, just know that sometimes your intuition is wrong. it's not that it's a game of right and wrong, but your intuition is not a sixth sense that is telling you the intentions of other people or what you know, card is going to come next on the deck or that there's a train coming down the track. Like that's that's all external information that our intuition cannot know because we don't have ESP. But it's about it's more about listening to our gut to learn more about what kind of triggers we have and what kind of trauma response we have and how we react to that shit. And I was like, holy shit, I've never even I've never even thought about it this way. I've always just been like, the Mormon church tried to tried to bastardize my intuition and steal it from me. And now I'm sitting here going, everyone's trying to take away my my fucking connection to myself. If that makes any kind of sense. Even my trauma responses are trying to take away from my connection to self, yeah. Why is that, Doug? I think the reason I think the reason for that is the survival mechanism. I think each one of us has learned each one of us got to where we are right now because we trust our survival, our survival mechanisms. Even even those of us who have gone through the most horrible, terrible, traumatic experiences to those of us who have not had all that heavy of trauma. We are where we are because we've we've learned to rely on our internal clock, our internal survival mechanism. So for me, it's like, wow, I've got to rethink even what that is. Is that a response to where I recognize danger? Or is that me trying to give third party ESP qualities like like like like like like the ability to read minds or the ability to, you know, guess the lottery numbers? Is that me still outsourcing my my meanness? that makes any sense. I think it does make sense to me, but I also just read that book. No, makes sense. So it reminds me. So I even was having a conversation. Someone asked me recently about like this, the unconscious and if it or the subconscious. And if you, if, if it's good to reprogram it, like to reprogram and to rechange our subconscious. And my response was a little bit of both because I think what we're talking to is, the different layers to it all. And it comes up in dreams. Doug, I think you shared a dream with me. We don't have to get into the dream. You shared a dream with me recently where there was security guards or something. And usually, you know, a dream with security guards or alarm system is talking about what you're talking about. It's those subconscious programings that we've developed that one, at one point in time, it was for our protection, whether physical protection or psychological protection, the psyche splits to protect us from those really traumatic events. And then sets up like a guard there to be like, no, we're not, we knew what happened last time. This part of us was shown. We're going to put a protection in there. And so it's like protecting you from yourself, from what you would call maybe your diamond or your deeper self, right? So there's like that deeper instinctual self that, that is probably sitting below those programmed responses, but and which is one of the reasons why psychedelics is so effective because is when we are on, you know, mushrooms, MDMA, stuff like that, it puts those little like, security guards to sleep or something for a minute. So you can really get access to that part that is so hard to get access to. And so I think it's a little bit of both in that way. And so my response to the person was like, yeah, I think to, help retrain those. parts to learn that like, look, I am safe. I don't need this protection anymore. Thank you for your service. Go retire, go, go, go do something else with your energy. Take some reprogramming and it takes us getting back into those liminal spaces where the, cause when, you know, the trauma happened, we were disassociated. It's like, we have to kind of get back into those liminal spaces to rewire those parts. But then it gets to, okay. well, do we want to rewire the deeper part? And I'm like, there's no rewire. It's like, you don't even want to rewire. mean, that's, that's your, that's you. That's your like higher self. That's your, your, your, your diamond. You're, you want to listen to that part. That's where it gets almost religious in reverse, where it's like, that's the part that you should worship. Cause it's the part of you that like, that's the divine in you. Right. But then I think again, people have such a hard time deciphering what is that higher self voice and what is my egoic voice and who is speaking to me and how can I tell the difference? And if it's just a trauma response that I'm thinking is, this is my higher self saying a certain thing. Well, first things first, I mean, everything's a trauma response, right? Everything that we experience is a response going, know this, or I always tell my friends when I walk around every day, it's like everything you're looking at is, is this me or is this not me? And why is this me or why is this not me? And that is essentially trauma. And trauma doesn't always have to be bad. Trauma is just something that got stored in your nervous system. The way I look at you go and the soul in this higher self, I guess you guys were wondering. share this with you guys. I don't want to tell somebody. I take a moment. The way I see the ego versus what I call the soul or the higher self is essentially everyone is born with this pillar inside of their chests that is just lit up and it is God and it has all of your predisposeds inside of it. So everything that makes you you, whether you're an introvert or not, whether you like to paint or you like to do poetry or all the things that you came out of the womb and suddenly you just knew what lit you up and it was obvious. Things that can never be taken from you, but can be unagreed upon and shaded and forgotten about or buried or crucified, essentially. And everything that we learn throughout our lives from how to pick up a fork to how to definitely not do something is a fingerprint or a press into that pillar that makes us who we are. And the way that I view it is that we go through this first portion of our lives, which is like pre -adulthood, right? Where we were making all these agreements and we're getting thrown around like rag dolls and we're unable to think about what autonomy is or care about it. And we get all these fingerprints, like millions every single day that are telling us who we are. And we do that and do that and do that until one day we get told we have to be adults. And at that moment we can either continue forward and keep our heads down and keep printing or we can pause and turn back and see who we've become so far. I think for me, there was a time that I wondered how could I possibly connect with... Are you thinking or did you revolution? Okay, maybe we lost her for a second. It's hard to tell without seeing the video. Before she comes back on, like yeah, what vibe she comes back on. I'm loving this. Looks like we dropped her for a second. I really like that. I really like that imagery of a of a pillar of the soul that is increasingly riddled with our own fingerprints. You know what I mean? Like in those fingerprints are sort of like the the treasure map. Like the fingerprints are sort of like the the identity, they're sort of like are unique. Just like every single fingerprint is unique. So is where these fingerprints show up on. I like that imagery of the pillar of the soul. it's, making me realize just how hard it is to unpack all this. you know, it, it's also why, she's back. Okay. Good. she is. That was the worst timing ever. I'm so sorry. my God. Hello. we we take the approach here that all is welcome. And so if it happened, it happened. And that's what it happened for. You know what I mean? you were gone, we were complementing the imagery of the the pillar of the soul with these fingerprints scattered throughout it that are reflections of each individual experience or any sort of like piece of information that informs our soul. just I love that. I love that imagery so much. Thank you. going to say real quick, and it was one of the reasons why I'm just going to like, give a quick plug to dreams again here, because that's what I love about working with dreams is because I think the dreams image that. So when you're working with the dream, the different parts in the dream often represent these different parts we're talking about, like whether it's someone who's there and protecting and trying to guard from a deeper self. It might be a deeper self that you're afraid of that's coming up in the form of like a vampire or something because your ego is afraid of it. But you can kind of image the complex and help determine, this, my higher, my deeper self, the pillar stripped of the fingerprints is wanting this. And you can kind of see the different fingerprints. Anyway, just a little plug for dreams again. I think I like that. because I don't talk about them enough on this podcast. Our resident dream analysis or analyst, I guess. Amazing. Anyway, Carly, please continue if you kind of remember where you left off. my gosh, it's, I did the thing where in the chaos of trying to get back on, I'm like, okay, my train of thoughts leaving and I need to get it back. And then I came back on and here we are. And I don't know where it is. okay, I'm trying to think. I have so many things that I could talk about that are exactly on this topic regarding the nervous system. What feels most alive for you with it? What feels most exciting to talk about? Everything feels exciting, that's the problem. I had a caffeinated decaf coffee. It shouldn't have happened. It's 9 p What do want to chit chat with you guys about? I have a story, do you want to hear it? Please. love stories. Alright. Perfect. I have a story and I would love to get you guys' two cents and I'm going to tell you as quickly as possible. you know what, if this story needs time, we If it needs to meander, we accept. Alright, alright, alright, alright, let's see, let's get into it and we'll see how far we get, okay? Dun dun. Alright, so September of last year, something weird happened to me. And I want to say I don't know exactly what it was, but I think that I do. So I live downtown, I have an east -facing building and it had the best view of Salt Lake in the world. And I've been here for five or six years and I've loved it and I've admired it. But I knew they were going to be building this big, huge building over my view. And I told myself two years ago, whenever they built that building, I was going to move. And you know, that was going to be my, I've been here long enough on to the next adventure, whatever. And kind of put that in my back pocket. It wasn't like I wasn't making plans. I wasn't thinking about it even every so often, but it was just something I thought. And I knew that a wheel in the back of my mind had been created, right? So, go about my life, years go by, this building's getting built. I go on a trip for a week and come back and I see that night when I get home that the building had been built and I'm like, okay, cool, that's fine, normal day, normal life. I go to sleep, I wake up the next morning and I walk into my living room and I approach my window. and kind of take in this view one more time, this kind of like new view, right, of this big building that sucks. And I felt something in my body, kind of where I picture this now pillar kind of go, boom, in my body. And it was just kind of like this little big, this big vibration and almost like a sound and it felt like. something had clicked together and it went through my whole body. And I said, okay. And I went about my day and I had a pretty normal day. And the next day I go to a coffee shop one that I go to all of the time and I'm journaling, whatever it's like 10 in the morning. Mind you, I have never looked into anything spiritual up until this point. This was last September. I had never attempted with my heart in it to meditate. hadn't prayed really ever, instead of moments where I thought that I was dying, as everyone does. And I never felt called or pulled into that world at all. But I knew that I had spent that whole previous year in this kind of mindset of healing, of being new. I'd gotten out of a relationship and individuality, and I knew that I'd been facilitating. myself and these selves and these fingerprints that were just mentioned, like I'd been tending to those the last year and doing mindful work and I didn't know it, right? I've been doing that, little did I know. Feel the gong, next day I'm journaling. All of the sudden, I am minding my own business and I wish you could see, I wish everyone could see me. But I essentially get this feeling of getting thrown back. like almost like a metaphysical somersault into myself and everything goes black and I'm suddenly in this black space with this like white void or be looking thing and it just feels like outer space and it's this stillness and I never felt anything like it in my entire life and I didn't I don't remember really thinking anything besides like having the awareness and knowing that I couldn't muster a thought. I was just supposed to sit. And that happened and I opened my eyes a little bit later, about 10 minutes, and it had been an hour and 45 minutes that I had just been sitting there with my eyes closed. And I said, that's weird. And when about my day, again, I didn't really know what that was, but it struck a kind of fear in me. It was, it didn't feel like your regular fear, it felt like that same place where that pillar had aligned, it felt like something had come in and just kind of tapped on it and was shaking it like a string. Just kind of like, like nervous system scared, you know? So that happens to me. I think the rest of that day was normal. The next day I wake up and the first thought that popped into my head the second I woke up was I was, I was, thinking of a dream, the dream that I had just had, which for some reason was that I was getting taken by a bunch of people. Don't know why that is. I would love for you to interpret that, Mike, but I was getting taken by a bunch of people and it was bad. And I woke up and was like, I just had that dream. And the thought right after that was you need to book a trip to Europe right now. And I said, okay. And I pulled out my phone and I typed in I think Amsterdam, because I knew there were direct flights from Salt Lake and I just booked a ticket for whatever was cheapest, which was like two weeks from then. And I said, OK, that's what I'm doing. The next two weeks are like the least to be noted. But essentially what happened during those those two weeks prior was I had quit the job I had been working that was great on paper in all of the ways, but just didn't didn't quite sit right with me. I'd made kind of bigger decisions I wasn't ready to make, but I remember feeling, I remember there was one day, I remember there was a day I called my mom about a week into this like feeling. And I remember like looking at the mirror when I was talking to her on the phone. I'm just... I didn't look. and glossy -eyed and the whole thing and I'd been crying. And I remember trying to tell her as I'm crying in these quivering tears that I am so afraid, but I know that I'm held. Like I feel like I'm being cracked open. I can feel this like metaphysical. pulling on my insides and stretching me into something and it feels like it's not me but when I think about what it is I picture my body and arms and that's all that I knew and I by the way I do not do psychedelics normally I did acid when I was like 19 and I did a little bit of microdosing in the summer of 21 and besides that didn't do mushrooms, do any psychedelics, I smoked weed once a day after 8 p and that was kind of like my situation. Nothing weird was happening but I knew something indeed weird was happening and I did not feel like I had done anything to call upon it. It had found me and all I had to do was go through it. There's so many side stories I could tell you guys within this. my gosh, you would die. me pause for just for a second because what I love about this is like what you were just saying, it came to you. And it's getting out like a lot of the, it's not just a Mormon mindset, but it's an American, it's a Western capitalist mindset of like, unless I do something, unless I, like nothing's going to happen, I need to do, I need to like pull myself up for my bootstraps. I need to work hard. need to do like, when the self, that pillar you're talking about, came to you. And your dream is fascinating. It feels like an initiation to me with the people grabbing you. And so it's really interesting that right after that, go to you initiate yourself in a way you go to a foreign country, you go to Amsterdam, you go almost I mean, it feels I don't know if it was like that in the trip, but it almost feels like a rite of passage in a way for me and what you did. aren't even ready for this. I'm gonna skip the first sub stories and we're gonna go straight to this Europe trip, because this is gonna tie into what you were talking about of the woman and the book that you had read. And all of that. I had had a couple things within those two weeks before I went on this trip that were prefacing something happening. And it was someone that I had known over a decade ago that had been popping into my brain that I knew I was gonna run into, even though they lived across the country in a different state. hadn't seen them in a decade and I knew I was going to run into them and I knew I had to like ask them if they were okay and do all of these things. And that kind of preoccupied a lot of my mind in those two weeks outside of experiencing everything miraculous. There was this very grounding egoic kind of like bird on the shoulder knowing that I was going to run into this person and see this person. And again? I'm sorry. This was an ex -boyfriend from when I was 15. And I was supposed to run into him and ask him if he was okay. And that's exactly what I did, which was crazy. But that was a day before my trip. So for those two weeks, it was a lot of fear and what felt like pending and not knowing, but yet being held. But a lot of kind of both of those things happening, the holding and the chaos. And then I ran into this person. And then the next day I go on this trip and the trip is when it all really began and also ended briefly for me. I went on this trip and at this point I had been getting into these meditations for two weeks, two or three weeks at this point. I had been able to go into past spaces, what felt like future spaces. I could be there completely with all of my senses. taste, touch, smell, hear. I could hug someone and I could smell them. I could smell like it, everything about every experience I was able to fully and completely go into. So I had been spending a lot of time doing that, prefacing this trip, but not really knowing what to do with it. Not knowing even how I was getting into those meditations, but just knowing that I was. And I get on this plane kind of having that knowing that I'm here and I made the decision to be here, but there is a ginormous part of my autonomy that I'm not authorized to use right now. That I believe is guiding me towards something greater that is coming from something that is made of light. And I have to kind of figure out how to go on this trip with this thing. So I get to Amsterdam. I'm there for two days. Mind you, I have no plan. I don't know if I mentioned that. I had no plan. It was to fly into Amsterdam and to just decide what to do. I had a... to Amsterdam before? I had never been out of the country before on my own, or ever in general, and I'd never been on a trip. was the feeling about Amsterdam? I'm kind of curious. my god, I loved it, I loved it. I mean, it was, I usually hate cities because they always smell like hot piss and everyone's in a bad mood and they're always running somewhere. Everyone's rushing all of the time. And Amsterdam, it was, I remember writing about it, even my first day that I was there after just being there for like four or five hours, like the vibe. Woo, sprinklers. my god, that scared the shit out of me. Hello, I'm just about to get soaked right now. But was like the vibe there was like, I had never experienced being out of the country, so I never experienced a collective culture not being in a rush. So that was crazy. Like everybody was just walking slowly and smiling at each other and they all had jobs obviously in places to go, but it was just laxed. It was like, yeah. find the pace of Europe so intoxicating. Agreed, agreed. I'm not meant to live in this economy. You Anyway, I went on a side note there, but I just, went into Amsterdam once for a weekend, but I was still Mormon at the time. And so, but I went to one of the coffee shops and got like a secondhand high from that was my first time. Cause I went with all my coworkers into the coffee shops are like coffee shops are actually the weed shops there. call them coffee shops. So you go in there, they have a whole weed menu. The air is filled with smoke and I come out and I'm like, man, you guys, I just really, I felt so happy. And I'm like, I really just want a waffle right now. That's amazing! you're fucking high, Mike. That's what that is. I love that for you, and it wasn't intentional so you won't go to hell for it. It just super nice. I had a plausible denied it, you know, like, Anyway, I want get back to your story. Sorry to digress, but. no, you're okay, you're okay. Okay, we're... Okay, so I go on this trip. I'm about, let see, three days in Amsterdam and I had a rough plan. I had one thing booked and it was I was gonna go to Amsterdam to France and I was gonna do France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and then hop back up to Amsterdam and go home. And the idea was I was just gonna kind of like putz. like three or four days in each place kind of get a vibe check because again because again back to I knew I was gonna move and I thought maybe I'll move to Europe so it was kind of like I'm gonna go to all these places and get a vibe check essentially so they're in Amsterdam for three days I have something booked in France long story I just I decided to go to Switzerland instead for a day which was cool and on my flight to Switzerland I brought the book, Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenza, as you do, because a homeless man threw it at me six days before, which was absolutely insane. I shit you not, it was crazy. Exactly. Nothing new there. Everyone has just read Becoming Supernatural because a homeless man threw it at them at some point in their life. That's how it works. things coming to you and not having to worry about things are just going to come including the books you need to read. bucks to the dome man. Yeah, but So I was super early on I still am actually I haven't picked it up since that trip actually crazy. but I was reading the part that's Pretty generically like if you believe it, it's yours. Like if you want it, it's yours You have the power to create you in reality, you know, there's a death the things you always hear, right? But in that moment, I heard it and I read it and I was like, wait a minute, I'm feeling kind of like so expansive and loose and like, I don't know what's going on, but yet I know anything can go on kind of. So am I able to use this kind of non -assumption to my advantage? And I remember like the second it clicked for me that I might be able to like do something with the words I just read, I got the Cheesiest goofy smile on my face you guys and I could not wipe it off. I Literally the plane landed about 10 minutes later I did not stop smiling all the way out the airport to the cab until I realized as I was getting in the cab I forgot my bag I like got off the plane and just like sober everything I had been I was so happy and so excited to go into whatever hotel and like think to manifest or whatever that I walked off without my luggage, my backpack, my carry on. They had to let me back into the airport. They had to have a security guard come and get me. It really big and really embarrassing, but I was on this wavelength. I was ready. So I go into this hotel room and I kind of just go, okay, if I'm, if I'm wanting to create something, what am I wanting to create? And so I go into this meditation and at this point quote unquote, like getting into a meditation was just closing my eyes at that point. I was always kind of at that plane of just getting ready to get thrown into it. So I go into this meditation and I am in this place and it's this apartment with this ocean view on this cliff side and I'm able to, you know, smell the floors, walk around, get my sense of direction. I can do north, south, east, west. neighbors, I can walk around a little bit outside, I can feel the ocean on my face, like all these things, right? And I'm like, this is really nice, this is really cool, this seems like this could, you know, potentially exist according to dispense that anything exists. I come out of this meditation and I write all this down. I write down all the attributes that I can all that I can remember and I write down the floor plan of this place that I can remember in my head. And I'm just gonna dumb this down to absolute nothing. So I do all that. I go to sleep. I wake up the next day and it was this full body knowing of cancel France today. You're going to Italy. You're doing it now and your trip begins there. That's where this place is gonna be. And so I said, okay. And I took a train through like mid Switzerland down to Italy and my God, I could spend two hours telling you guys the story, but I also want to catch up to now, because this was nine months ago. both, I almost don't want to just like, sow injustice, this story. Long story short, I got sent on this trip, on this train, and going back to what we were talking about earlier. The moment that I decided that I was going to get led to this alleged place that may or may not exist was the moment that it was like I was disconnected from my mind. I wasn't disconnected from my head or my brain, but the best way that I could describe it was I could not muster up enough energy To complete a thought. To ask a question. I could not physically, even within my own mind, reject something. Everything that I was doing was a yes. Everywhere that I was going was a yes. Because I knew that whatever it was that was guiding me was beyond me. Because I couldn't reject to it. And everywhere that I was going was leading me directly to love. Every single place. So I have this place in mind, right? And it's, they're not great lists of how to get there, right? I'm like, it's an apartment, it's got a window and it's on a cliff's edge and there's grassy hills is all that I know. And that's what I had dumbed it down to at that point. I said, I need to go somewhere that's on a cliff's edge and behind this apartment or this house or whatever is grassy hills. And I continued down just the Italian coast for two weeks every morning, stopping at a coffee shop, grabbing a stranger, telling him I'm looking for grassy hills and a cliff, them saying, I'm not going to be able to find that combination in Italy. I'm either going to find one or the other and good luck. And me saying, okay, I'm going to find it. Going, going, going, going, getting rejected, rejected, rejected on a train the entire time, not a car. And the end. every single moment that I was going, even though I had no clue where I was going, no one knew that I was doing this. No one knew I was on some kind of wild goose chase looking for a home. I didn't tell anyone. I could not feel a single inkling of rejection. Not one, not one. I could listen to a couple songs that would make, that made me feel like I was on a mission of some sort that could make me cry. Kind of like this hero's journey, like outside perspective of like, yeah, you are doing this thing. but I wasn't able to actually feel the fear of what it would mean if I could be wrong. Again, longest story ever short, I get invited to this wedding. At the wedding, I meet the pastor. The pastor tells me about this secret town. I go to the secret town. On my second and a half day there, I happen to meet a guy as we get stuck on a road together. You she's asking about where I'm going. I describe what I'm trying to find. And he goes, that's my secret house. And since you just described my secret house to me, I will take you there. And I said, okay. This man took me to a secret house on a cliff's edge, two bedrooms, grassy hills behind it, cause it's got vineyards, garden, chickens, pigs. thing my entire dream of always wanted and I'm moving there next summer. I was gonna say this has to end with something. So you're so so this guy maybe is your soulmate and you've you met him through wait so there's no psychedelics involved in this fucking story. okay, you guys, okay, Doug and Mike, we're gonna have like a separate phone call. I'm gonna tell you this story. I wish I should have told you this whole story. It's the craziest thing. I had so many psychedelic moments, completely sober. So when everything happened in September, I have a therapist who's essentially like my meditation coach. And she was like, especially now, don't you dare take psychedelics. She's like, what's happening to you right now is that you're having a psychedelic experience, not on psychedelics. So don't touch anything, not even weed. and I don't really drink alcohol either, so that was easy. So I was completely sober this entire time, completely and utterly. Yeah, which was super insane. And just again, I essentially, as I look back on it now, especially all these months later, almost a year, I realized now I was literally in a meditative state for about two months. And what that looked like to me, which it's not that way right now, because I haven't been practicing, but. What that looked like to me was, and what it looks like to me now, is every rejection that I have inside of me, every no that comes up, that's how I identify my ego. Pretty much. If you want to have a relationship with God, everyone tells you, you just have to trust, you have to listen, you have to know that it's love and it's unconditional love and it's all of these things. And at the time for me, I still can't believe that I was able to be opted into such a gnarly experience. Kind of without the opportunity or the ability to object or to reject. as now I've been going through it the last year and I've had plenty of time to reject it and plenty of time to see what that means for me. I was gifted this like two month experience of seeing what my life could be like if I stopped saying no to myself and I started believing that there was something out there that was holding me and taking care of me and witnessing me. And I think the human condition we're all so fucking upset about all the time. is that we're not being witnessed. We want someone to not only tell us where to go, well, we don't even want that. We want someone to see us make the right choices for ourselves that take us where to go. That's what we want. don't want someone. Sorry? I said I just I was just going to agree with you. I mean, that's that, Mike, it makes me think about what you're talking about, like that outsourcing big, big parts of ourself to other entities, whether it's other people, the religious leaders, parents, friends, coworkers, bosses, like like. I'm I'm curious just as a side note here. Carly, like you're still pretty like deep, you're still really into meditation and still deep in your practice with that. I've slipped out of my practice last month and a half. had something, I had a big slap in the face. I had a couple of big slaps in the face in July and I kind of reached that threshold where I could either run towards it and be brave or run away really fast and be scared. And so I've been doing that. But, and within that, I have been realizing throughout this entire year long experience, how I've been able to, take, to genuinely take this experience from me and to genuinely take peace from myself and to not realize that I'm doing it. And one day you reject the smallest thing, like you don't want to meditate for five minutes. And then four days later, you're rejecting your biggest urges and your, greatest intuition. And that's kind of where I found myself sliding down. so I can't, can't say I've been doing it perfectly. but I've definitely been trying to figure out what it means for me over and over again to go back. Because when I went into it initially, wasn't a cognizant choice, it just happened. So it's been incredibly just ski -wampus for me to try to figure out what it means for me to get back to the nothing that I was. Well, that's yeah. I I guess you guys heard about like the. God, what's it called in meditation? It's like the rising and passing thresholds. Is that ring ring ring a bell? Not to I don't know enough about it to talk about it. just it's a it's a it's a benchmark. Like it's a it's a it's a watershed event in your meditative journey where you start to God, if I I if I talk much about it, I'm going to sound like an idiot. But like it's it's essentially to me feels like operating in that higher mind space, like recognition of it and listening to it. And anyway, I'm just When I hear you tell that story about just basically you've got this image in your mind, you know, the rolling hills, cliffside, you're going to a fucking wedding out of nowhere. People are like, I'm the pastor and there's a secret town. And then you're on the road. You're on the road and meeting some guy and he's like, also in this secret town, I have a secret house. It's like. Like, yeah, I mean, right. So there's like I wish I knew more about it. It's just just ringing. Maybe we should put a pin and meet what I'm talking about and maybe I can do some research on it later. a couple things here because Carly, I wasn't expecting when I said that was like initiation and a rite of passage. I had no idea. dude. Yeah. yeah y 'all my god, I could just go yeah, we're gonna I would love to tell you guys my story and so there's this thing of, cause you were saying, I was filling into something you were saying there about basically saying yes to yourself, you know? and what I'm finding though, and maybe this is because being Mormon, I've been used to pleasing other people so much, like I've so much in people pleasing that for me, I have to get, have to use a lot of no's before I get to my yes. If that makes sense, like I have to be like, no, I don't want, no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to, no, no, no, no, kind of deal. like, and then I get to the spot where like, okay, now this is a yes. And this is what I want to do. But for me, sometimes I need the no's. Cause it's not like, if I just said yes to everything, when we first started this podcast, I was like in that. Yes, yes, yes. I was like, yes and everything. Meanwhile, I feel like I was spreading myself way too thin. I was having some cool adventures. It was great, but I was like way too thin. I was getting so overwhelmed and it was like, I'm saying yes to the things I really don't want to do. And so it feels like for you that yes is coming from a yes. were following on that trip was like from a deeper place. was, you had already tuned into. Right, yeah. a yes, and we're being led by that. Yeah, that was full, my intuitive yes. Like, God unfiltered is how I view it. Like I was unable to reject as you would be if you were in the face of something powerful, you know? It was like I literally was like stricken dumb within my own mind. Like I could not say no. Unable and if I if I if I thought about pushing past it because obviously I have some sort of autonomy I could have pushed past it or I could have decided to like I don't know go drink a bunch of wine and like get all cloudy and Throw myself off for a couple days like I could have done all of these things But it was like if the thought of it made me physically sick In a way that was that was it that no was stronger than rejecting it like Yeah, the the rejection to me rejecting was stronger than the urge to reject, if that makes sense. Yeah. But that's a really good point. And also where I've been balancing with Mike recently is like, what are the true yeses and what are the true nos? And to kind of shine a little bit more clarity on what I mean is more of like... When I say kind of like no more no's essentially, it's more of like, I've been finding my hardest and times in my life that are full of the most sorrow and hardship and confusion. Or when I keep fucking asking myself, I keep asking, I keep going, what do I want? Okay, I don't want that, but okay, well, what do I want? And okay, well, then how do I want it? And okay, well, then what's that gonna look like? And... we'll and for me, and with everything that I've ever learned in my life, that's like the most productive thing that I can do, right? What do I want? How do I want it? When do I want it? How am gonna get it? These all seem like they're productive, and I'm in a space in my life right now where I feel like I'm re -realizing how complete and utter fucking bullshit that is. It's complete and utter fucking bullshit. If we're only existing here in the present moment. than past identifications and future plans in such an incredible, massive way that we can only find out if we actively choose to begin to unlearn the conditioning we've been given. Like, it's so needless. Every time I go back to worrying about the eye, I know that's what's happening, is I'm going back to worrying about the eye. I'm not moving forward into wondering about the what if and what else is there and what's happening right now in this moment that I'm not noticing that's right here, right now with me. And I think, you know, like I said, I've kind of... hold myself out of this kind of like enlightened, meditative state to the point where I wasn't sure if I was like at my best and wanting to be, you know, on this podcast and ready to talk. But at the same time, I realized within that, shit. sorry. I absolutely lost my train of thought. What exactly was I just saying? I had two and then they split in half right before my eyes. I'm so sorry. I just love this. If I could if I could just sort of like we're at a hour and five. So I'm going to I'm going to redirect us just just a little bit onto back onto your trip and maybe on to. I guess that's what you were talking about is sort of like that identification of. You know, you're kind of talking about that 360 degree view of. how you're living, right? How you're listening and living your life. Remember, I had a similar trip to Italy. I did not have a similar trip to Italy. Let me restart. You Doug, where's your house? Let me restart the way that story begins. I did not have a similar trip, but I did have a solo trip to Italy that was kind of like, it was kind of like spur of the moment. And, you know, the way you described getting off, when you got off the plane, was that in Italy or was that in Amsterdam? When you were smiling and you forgot your thing. That was in Italy? that was in Switzerland. Yeah, that was before I knew about Italy quite yet. I got off the plane in Venice and I had been reading, I must have been reading a farewell to arms, because I was reading a Hemingway book and it was about his time in Italy. So it must have been a farewell to arms. So I'm like reading that. And you know, when you're on a plane, your emotions are heightened anyway. And so I'm just bawling like a baby. I'm like, living, this is like, I'm living my fullest life. Like this is it. And. You know, funnily, I also left my shit behind. And... Yeah. Isn't that crazy? I mean, you know, Carly was in Switzerland. I think, yeah, it's just knowing that you, think the actual physical knowing that you're moving towards something bigger helps you leave things behind, right? It's like, am going somewhere new where they don't know me. Like my identifications aren't here with me now. No one knows me as who I was before. So that's that's dead on, that kind of takes me to where I'm kind of trying to marry this these points, because what I what I found when I was in a foreign country, I do not speak Italian. I do not have anybody with me. I've got no family, no friends, no no church mission to do like I am alone in Italy. And so what I found. was that the only thing I could do was whatever the fuck I wanted to do. That's the only thing I could do. And I think the lesson that I learned and forgive me if I'm completely misreading your story, but the part of your story that I'm hearing for me is the reminder of it took me being in a foreign country, not speaking the language and being alone for me to recognize I could listen to myself of what I wanted to do. And I wonder if it requires that separation because here I am in my regular life in Idaho. I got bills to pay. I got jobs to do. I got kids to raise. I got friends to visit. I got people who I got to say, you know, my wife, where do you want to go to dinner? Like I've got so many people helping me make decisions about me that it's like, hearing your story is that really, really clear and direct reminder to me about what it was like to live fully as me, just me, without anyone else informing my identity, without anyone else informing what I wanted to do, where I wanted to visit, where I wanted to eat, who I wanted to talk to, who I wanted to interact with. And so hearing your story, Carly, yours is an augmented version because you're just like, look, I got this. I got this fucking image in my mind and I'm going to track it down and you end up with all these sort of like almost like quasi magical experiences. But as I was listening to that story, I was like, yeah, I've learned what it's like to just be unapologetically and only me. And it's like stirring something in me right now. It's like I'm having this moment of reminder and it took me going to a foreign country to have it. And it now just took you telling me your story of being in a foreign country to remind me of that very, that very feeling. So I'm just like, I don't really have much of a point to say other than just the feeling, like the gratitude feeling I'm having right now of like, wait a minute, Doug, you do have you in there and you can listen to just you. You don't have to listen to what everybody else is, what everybody else might want to be part of. Now that doesn't mean I'm not being, you know, purely me, but it also means I'm using other people and other stimuli to inform me. Anyway, does that make? Yeah, that's that's what I'm experiencing is you're telling that story. So thank you for that. Yeah, you're welcome. And it's a reminder that I've been needing myself recently of hilarious. Like, who am I when I'm alone? And yeah, who am I when no one is saying no, or when I'm not thinking about, yeah, who I need to please or who I need to check in with today or, you know, regular life things that are so important in relationships that we have to maintain. But trying to figure out how to moderate that is not an easy task. It's really not to figure out where your placement is in regards to these relationships that are still You still have to maintain while still maintaining yourself. It's such a slippery slope of getting either too identified with everyone else around you or feeling like you need to be maybe maybe too like too alone and too isolated where you feel like, you know, suddenly no one can quite understand what you're going through. And it's like it's just this like teeter totter of how to exist. Yeah. Knowing that essentially everyone and everything is fake in a reflection of yourself. And then also therefore knowing that everyone there is here to teach you all these things about yourself continuously and forever. And how to hold all of that at once is proven impossible so far. Well, and two of things that really sit in with me too is not only that, you know, you're leading from that. Yes, you're talking about, but what decisions would I make if I trusted that the best is yet to come and that I'm being held or seen? Right. how would, how would that change? How many, how many choices do I make or not make? Because I'm scared that the best isn't yet to come and that, and that I'm just gonna crash and burn. Right. Yeah, exactly. And what did, what choices does that keep me from making that I otherwise would make? that's really, that's really sitting with me. Cause there's something not only about your story, there's something so free about your story, you know, similar to Doug's about, you know, finding just like you're in a foreign country, doing what you want to do. But then also there's just, there's just a freedom to it. I'm like, look, I'll just wander here. I'll wander here. I wander here. Excuse me. Okay, Just the ghosts are acting up. fine. That's what happens. go to the cemetery, it's just going to be mischief. That's what. You But sorry, what was that last line? You said it was just I just said when you go to a cemetery, it's going to be mischief. yeah, yes it is. all those ghosts rattling and beeping and bopping their bells. But yeah, it's no easy feat to keep. it's something that I keep realizing throughout this last year is like, God is unconditional or whatever you wanna call it, your intuition, your guidance or whatever. It's this unconditional thing, right? I remember after my trip, I got done and it was a slippery slope where my ego started to come in and start to tell me that like, you only experienced all these things. because you were doing this and this and that. And since you woke up today and you didn't do that one thing, now you're not gonna have as much intuition as you did yesterday. And those things were starting to come up and it did for like weeks and I didn't even notice. And it's just, yeah, I think, I don't know why I keep losing my train of thought. You guys, I'm so sorry. This is so embarrassing for me. I told them to have coffee. I'm so embarrassed. I don't know why. getting so jazzed and then I just explode and then I lose my train of thought. so good. And we'll press where it kind of towards the stopping point yet, but I did want to make a plug. So I don't call it God. I call him Yoda, which is like a Spanish word for Yoda. And that's in tribute to the Doug and I met our favorite person on earth. name is Carmen. Hello Carmen, if you're listening, if you're out there, we love you. Bye, Kermit. she taught us about Yoda. And that's my God image now is Yoda. Joda is your God. I love that's your God image. Carly, what's your God image? You know, I'm still working on the image. I do feel like God is me though when we're not separate. So you are your god image. I essentially when I picture God, I don't picture me. It's definitely someone different. But it's I feel like there's there's the awareness of the non separation, right? Of like, I'm always in the regard of me and God being the same as that I always have access to God. That's what I was saying. Thank you, my brain. is that I always have access to God. Anytime that I think I don't have access to God, it's because I'm feeding myself some bullshit story about why I wouldn't be able to receive unconditional love. And I found and I've been finding how much we do that so many times a day. And I'm someone who really likes myself. I really do. I spent a lot of time getting to know the ins and outs of me and what it means to like her and to love her and to hold her when she needs to. But at the same time, man, it's like I I swear it's like four days ago, I turned around and I realized last month. I've been having a good time and loving my friends and doing these things, but at the same time in this other compartment in the back right side of my brain, man, I have been being mean to her. I have not been letting her talk or express or, you know, let her share what excites her or what scares her. I think I got so caught up in this whole not quite having identification. or that being malleable enough that it can be anything, that the way my ego snuck up on me and turned that into something kind of poisonous was anytime that identification would come up for me that didn't perfectly suit the label of nothingness, I would reject it. Man. And it's crazy, like it was the second you boys pay attention because I have been paying attention, you will realize how many times you reject yourself in a day. It can be like, I kind of want a glass of water. I'm kind of thirsty. Nope. I'm not going to get one. And you do that. You will. And I think the only reason, I mean, there's so many reasons, but one of the main reasons why we do that is because we're trying to feel productive in each present moment. And the easiest way to do that is rejecting because rejecting at the end of the day is still making a decision. It's just not having to physically make a decision. God, that's so interesting to think about. Like, fear of rejection starts with self -rejection. yeah, because again, self -rejection is only self -preservation. Self -rejection is your nervous system saying, I've seen this before, this means we're not going to live. And that can literally be solving a math equation, or that can be doing something actually physically dangerous. Your nervous system does not know the difference what is happening in the physical world. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. mean, geez. So. no, it's interesting because you mentioned this, Carly. I know we have to wrap up here soon, but you mentioned when you were traveling around and you were like, you didn't have a fear of like people telling you no, or it just bounced off of you. And I've had those moments when it's like, I'm actually like when I'm living from like an authentic place. It's kind of like this thing of like, or speaking from that place. It's like, I'm not really worried if they say no or not. It's weird. It's kind of like, yeah, like. if they say, cause if they say no, it's like, okay, well, I was speaking for my authentic place and it was a no. So that's fine. it's when I'm trying to, when I'm speaking for a different place, I'm trying to manipulate that. Now I'm worried about the response. Now I, now I get worried about it. exactly, exactly. my God. Something so funny that's been happening to me kind of on that same note is when I was trying to meditate the last couple days, trying to get back into my thing, you know, and I'd have these moments, so classic, where I'm like trying to do the whole not thinking thing. And I think about like, I start to get to like the nothingness, like the blackness. And then I think like, what am I thinking? And then I'm like, I don't know what I'm thinking. What am I thinking? And it's like, I don't know what I'm thinking. And then I like, start to like panic about that. I don't know what I'm thinking, but I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking about nothing. And like suddenly that's what's wrong. Is that like, I don't know what I'm thinking about, but it's what I'm thinking about. You know what I mean? dude, you are you are you are narrating my internal monologue right now like just like, what is going on? The next thing you know, you're like anxious and it's like, how did I get here? Everything's fine. Everything is just as fine as it was 10 seconds ago. I convinced myself that it's a problem. I convinced myself that there's now a problem. And I still don't know why exactly fully we do that. I think it's to keep us alive. But I think at the end of the day, it's also to keep us from growing, unfortunately, because I think growth is pain. Right? Again, solving a math equation, you're learning how to do something, you're growing that part of your brain, that equals pain. And I think your ego doesn't quite know the difference between the two. But I'm so sorry, the bright train of thought is not continuing. I got I got good news and bad news for you too. And it's the same thing. I want more. I would love that. we've got to stop here. This is as good a place as any with basically just like, look, everything's fine. mean, goddamn, everything's fine. I have a tattoo that says everything's fine. But Carly, can we do this again? Can we get part two? Absolutely love that. Yes, please and again. I'm I'm sorry boys for yeah, I'm sorry. I'm a little don't apologize for blowing my mind. But before you go, Carly, is there anything you want to plug? just am I, that's a good question. If you want to support a local business, there's low key Carly. That's my main source of income right now. There's that. That's kind of the only page that I use. I also have a crazy story about that. I would love to tell you some of the things I feel like I just didn't quite... into that. We gotta dive into that whole fucking thing. That's why I was like, I don't even know if we want to plug this thing until we do part one, two type of deal. actually don't. I don't know if I'm ready to plug that because you guys I have the craziest story ever. It just happened. I just lost like $80 ,000. Last you guys it was crazy. It was crazy. And it was insane. And it like has to do with all this stuff. It was insane. I have so many things to tell you guys. I feel like I just kind of low key botched this and I'm so sorry. I would really love to do a part two. I have so many things I want to share. you say... blotch this, we wouldn't be saying let's do part two. Okay, because I feel like I keep getting like on this train of thought and then I think I'm just over caffeinated and I literally see the train explode and then it's gone. I'm so embarrassed. just go in tangents over here, So don't, yeah, don't feel that at all. Let's just, let's, you two are communicating. Let's just get a text and figure out when we can do this. any links you want to put in the bio for now, but if not, we want to save it for the next part. knew that too. So, but Carly, I'm glad we made this happen and. Yes, me too. Thank God it took us. Took us until now, but we've done it. Let's not wait this long for part two, girl. Let's do it in like the week or whatever. Honestly, I would love to. Again, I'm getting back on my shit and I promise I would just love to tell a coherent next story next time that is coherent and we could pick which one. There's so many that have happened that would just be so on theme with all of the things. And this has been so fun. But within the week, I would absolutely love to just let me know when you guys can. You are so adorable and delightful and wise behind your, you're so wise behind your ears. Yeah. Yeah. you. I'll throw my camera away. Say bye. I had that wisdom at 20 and change. I'm trying to do my best to hold it right now, but it's it helps to bounce it off of you guys. So thank you. don't I don't quite have any one in my life that gets it either is in that kind of like spiritual or even psychedelic space. So. plus it's good to let it keep moving. You don't want to hold it right. It flows. It feels better when it's flowing like water and moving. So that's yeah. Let's just keep fucking doing this. That's not good. I love you all. I'm going hit stop because we have to make sure everything uploads in a second. let's say goodbye. But stay on for just one second. stay on for a Okay.