Agitation (aka Infants on Mike on Gene Keys on Agitation on Mormons on Mushrooms on Thrones) (#215)

Mike reunites with Glenn Ostlund of Infants on Thrones to kick off a new series on the Gene Keys. They dive into Glenn’s new book You’re Not Broken, Just Rewiring, explore Gene Key 51 (Agitation → Initiative → Awakening), and share raw stories of faith, separation, creativity, and transformation.

You're Not Broken... Just Rewiring

Transcript

0:47

Okay, so I just want to cue up this episode before we get into it. So this is a collaboration we're doing with Glenn Auslan from Infants on Thrones. We've done these collaborations in the past, but it's been several years since we've done them and I'm just so happy to be doing them again. We're going to be doing a series of episodes on the gene keys. If you guys are not familiar with the gene keys, we'll talk about it more in this episode. Glenn knows more about it than I do. I'm just going leave you with the tease that we're talking about the gene keys. Really cool. You'll learn more about it as we get into it in this episode. But I wanted to cue up these conversations with Glenn real quick. um know, many of you have probably listened to Infants on Thrones at some point. um The podcast was a huge part of my faith deconstruction journey. And the first time, you know, we were doing these collaborations with Glenn, I just have to say it was like a full circle moment for me that. was just really cool to be doing these episodes with someone who was an influential part of my spiritual journey and who continues to be. I one of the things I really love about what Glenn's done on Infants on Thrones is his podcast has kept evolving. It's evolved as he's evolved. And you'll hear him go, if you listen to his podcast, you'll hear him go through his own faith journey, and not just faith journey, personal journey, I should say. spiritual journey, whatever. um But I just really admire the way it keeps evolving as Glenn evolves. And in this episode, we also talk a little bit about Glenn's new book. So Glenn just recently finished a book. He's releasing it for free, the audio book version. So on Apple, podcast, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, it's called You're Not Broken, Just Rewiring. And I'm more than halfway through it. have to say it's one of my favorite books I've listened to recently. It Glenn just so he just is able to blend. um The concepts of neuroscience, psychology, spirituality, mysticism. um Some of these things, you know, like we're like we're going to be talking about today of the Gene Keys. It's just a book that I think is right up the alley of. Mormons on Mushrooms listeners. And so I can't wait to dive in it with him. these episodes are going to be released both on Mormons on Mushrooms and Infants on Thrones. So. Yeah, I guess that's all I wanted to say to keep this up. Enjoy the episode. Good to see your face. Yeah, it's good to see you too. It's been years. It has hasn't it? It's been like what maybe three years since we our last? Yeah, I think three years. Well, that's way too long. That's three years too long. Yeah, yeah. So I've been listening to your voice a lot though lately. I listened to yours the other day too. So I was thinking we could just record our conversation here and just like cross publish it on our podcasts. I would love to. Let's do it. ah Am I recording now? I think I am. Yeah, when I joined I said it was recording. Yeah, not gonna use any of this stuff, but. Use whatever you want. You have my consent, my consent. Really? Okay, but I wanna hear it like before we start like. doing this for earnest, I wanna do like a little catch up. And so there might be some things that you don't want to put out there, I don't know. That's true, I'll let you know afterwards if I don't want any of it. Okay. Yeah. So first start with your separation. Yeah, so um it's been two years. been like, yeah, it's been hard. You know, we were together for about 20, for 20, we were married for 20 years. You guys met at? BYU? Utah State. Utah State. Yeah, that's where I met Doug too. So we all met at Utah State. um And you know, it was one of those things where you know, I think we tried giving our space. So we had like an open-ish marriage for like the last two years of our marriage. we tried to give her, you know, it's like, we both, kind of went through different phases of our marriage. We had like our Mormon phase and then kind of like our questioning Mormon phase where we moved out of California and we left the church kind of together pretty close. She left a little bit for me, but we were both in that like questioning phase, you know, and then more of an exploratory phase, know, kind of, and then, I think was just a feeling of like, trying to discover ourselves for the first time. You know, who am I outside of Mormonism? Who am I, and who is she? And we tried to give each other space to do that while still being married, but I don't think it was enough space. think it was just, you know, like I need the space to, make mistakes if I need to, you know, like, and not have to report back to anyone and someone questioning my mistakes and just kind of own my own mistakes. I think it was, you know, too. So it's been, it's been a really hard two years, but it's been good in a lot of ways, but like a lot of, I've never felt, I don't think I've ever had a broken heart before, you know? And I have loved I've never been alone and I've kind of loved that too. You I've never had the nights alone. Like right now we switch off, like we have an apartment, kids stay here at home. So we have the house and an apartment and we switch off every week. nesting thing. Yeah, the nesting. And that works well for us. I'm especially here in LA. We don't have to afford, have to afford like two homes that are big enough for our kids, you know? oh And you kind of get experience. Okay, when I'm here with the kids, um like I'm here with kids this week. Yeah. I'm more in dad mode and then when I go into the apartment, more, you know, it's like reliving some twenties that I can get to. Do you guys share that apartment too? We do, it's two bedrooms. So we have our own bedrooms there, but we share the apartment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And is there any like hope of reconciling and growing old together side by side or? You know, I think so. I think we have more of a chance doing this than we would if we tried to. think if we give each other space for a while, there could be a chance that we, you know, um, but like right now I'm kind of treating it at least as much as I can, like as a guy, cause I think at first when we separated, when we first decided to separate, it's like, look, let's just live separate, but let's, let's still date each other. And that's what I wanted. And so, you know, we kind of decided to do that. We were on MDMA actually. That's when we decided to do it. and then we tried to date, but she wasn't feeling it at the time. think she, and you know, the feminine intuitions that a deal, think she was sensing that we would have fallen back into old patterns real quick, you know? And I was like, no, no, can do this. But I think she was right in hindsight. Like, and so I'm like, I still love her. I still, I'm still very attracted to her and still, um, But it's also, I've seen, I've become more conscious of my unconscious that caused it to happen too. And not, at first, there was a time when I was really in a victim mode about it, feeling like this is more on her end. But it... It's mutual. I'm finding it more like I've needed this separation. I've needed this space to explore myself. um, and plus, you know, like, um, I don't know if we talked about on that little episode that you listened to, but Doug and I have been leaning into music a lot lately and it's turned out a couple of a few really good songs. Yeah, I want, I'm good. I'm going to do this. I'm going to play the guitar and sing and send, send you something. Cause I like, when I saw you guys at miles and gyms, I think you guys both had your guitars there. And I was like so like, I just wanted to play your guitar or his guitar and just like jam with you guys or something like that. I know, I just like, was too shy. But I do wanna say before, cause I wanna hear about the music too, but when I saw you Jim and Miles and I was projecting my own desire for like, that person that's like your person. I projected that onto you and Audra. I don't know why. Like I just looked at the two of you and I just thought you guys are awesome. That is like it. You know, like based on nothing but just like my own like desire that I wish that I had that. Yeah, but we had that and that's how it kind of felt. mean, So that's what I'm saying. It has that feeling. And you know, the first time I did, um when I did Ayahuasca the first time, one of the images that came to me It was right when Audrey and I were kind of opening up to, and there was this image and we were the butterflies and you know, we would fly away and then we'd come back together and fly away and you know, and look, you know, I've done medicine enough in my exploration of the subconscious to know that like, that's, uh There's so much projection going on and that could be my own on Emma or could be us our vibe together that we might have periods where we go like this and come back together um I kind of get the sense that that's what our life paths gonna be kind of um What that looks like when we reconnect? I don't know but um but it feels like a deepening into like uh I don't know, a love that's um less, I don't know, less codependent maybe too. um And it kind of almost ties into the jinkie thing we want to talk about. That's what, so like seriously though, when I was listening, I was listening to it on my drive home last night and with the agitation thing and he gives the example of like, maybe you marry someone. Relationships also play out the agitation. Two wounded human beings come together and they fall in love. Let's say they get married. And once the honeymoon period's over, the chemistry of the underlying agitation comes to the surface. Because of its deep rootedness, it will always come to the surface. And now you have two states of agitation interacting. What it takes to ride this wave and stay together through the process. And if you haven't had some experience with meeting the state inside yourself first, then you don't really stand much of a chance when it arises because you're just going to project it onto the other person. You're going to blame them and they're going to blame you. We know what kind of mess that causes. And it's all because we most often resort to harshness. We snap at each other and then we blame ourselves and we feel bad because we've been harsh. and then we propagate the harshness inside ourselves and in the relationship. I mean, most people never really stood a chance in the first place. Incarnation on this planet is quite a thing and we're not taught these basics. And like, wonder how this is going to hit Mike when he hears this. Like if the agitations just really like start coming up. yeah. And so there's a part of me that was almost like, I think we can almost leave this in here is, know, if it ties into the Gene Key thing, you know, I mean, I talk pretty openly about I want to make sure I'm just telling my story and not hers. You know, and that's but if it ends up tying into the episode, you know, we'll fill it. But because I think people can relate to separation and. When I read the Gene Key thing, was like, holy shit, this is just really, it was feeling very, it feels very aligned. So did you read it? Did you listen to it? Did you do both? Oh, I both. Yeah. So I read it first on that site and then I listened to what you sent. Oh, okay. Oh, you read what it said on the site? on the site. Yeah. And then I went through there and then that's when, um, oh, then, um, you, and then you sent me the audio. Yeah. And then I listened to the audio and Yeah, it feels very much aligned with as far as like life path and especially the agitation at going back to my mission. I don't know, we can get into it now or yeah, but. Yeah, yeah. So you're still working Yeah, I'm still working And getting a PhD? And getting a PhD, And working as like a dream analysis consultant thing? Yeah. There's a lot going on. That's awesome. That is so cool. Yeah. Cool. Excellent. So should we start with an opening prayer? Yeah, I mean, that's how we always start things. But who we want to pray to is a question. Who would you pray? Who do you pray? I do. I, so look, look what I got here. I've got, I don't know if you can see this, but I've got a little altar set up here. I do an altar practice. Ooh, I don't know if this is gonna, can you kind of see my altar I've got going on there? A little bit. Yeah. I don't know. I can bring out some things, but. Um, like this is a, look at this like verd, like it's a black Madonna statue. found it some like, I don't know. I just find like little things that kind of mean things to me. Yeah. And I liked some candles. usually do some incense or something. And I don't know if I'm praying to anything in particular. I I've worked with some entities before. Um, but mostly it's like I opened space and there's, it feels like an ancestral connection. So sometimes it's with ancestors, um then sometimes it's like, but then it's changed the definition of what an ancestor is, you know, and in your book was bringing this out, by the way, too. You were mentioning some stuff. It's like, we're not, we're just the other day in one of the chapters I was listening to, it's like, not only do we have our blood ancestors, but like our cells are made up of ancestral elements that may became, you know, there's our maybe ancestors from different dimensions. There's our Ancestral ancestry of our lineage, right? Like, not, not just Mormon Mormonism, but extending beyond Mormonism past it maybe to like, mean, it's just, there's so many ways you can look at ancestry, right? Yeah. And I've even had moments like, uh where it's like, I'm connecting with ancestors, but what I feel like I'm connecting with are beings who are now having their own experience on another plane of reality. but we're meeting up in this place outside of time. And you know, is that, yeah. Yeah. I conceptually understand how that could be. And there was a time where that just would have sounded like gobbledygook to me, but now I'm like, no, I could see how that's possible. I could see how that's possible. Yeah, I'm so glad that you're enjoying the book and you're finding those little nuanced things because. It started for me where I was thinking about ancestors of like... you know, there's this missing link or whatever in evolution, what was before humans. We don't totally know what was before humans, but whatever it was, it's in our DNA. You know, like every single step, every single stage along the way, we've got those memories. And I used to hear people say, you know, we have cellular memory, and I just rolled my eyes at it. And then I'm like, okay, but like, our DNA really, and these are molecules. These molecules must have learned how to be what they are before they were able to become what we are. And they dictate so much of what they, and there's this epigenetic exchange between what's going on outside of us and what's going on inside of us. There's just so much interconnectedness that yeah, I could see how there could be entities that. we just can't even conceive of that are in different realms or planes or whatever. Yeah, so I had this one experience where I was just feeling the energy of I had a cousin who's really close to me who took his own life about a year and a half ago and it was probably the hardest or no, it's been two and a half years now, two and a half years. So was right before my separation. So it was kind of that year I was dealing with his death and then the death of my marriage. So a lot of grief coming up. you know, for whatever it is and, you know, just feeling his memory, his energy, his, know, um and I've stopped trying to figure out, one, I tried to just hold it in a space where it's not literal, but it's also, doesn't mean it's not real either. Like the memory, I'm feeling, it feels like, in that moment, like, you know, if you close your eyes, and if you were here in the room with me, Glenn, like, I would feel like you here. It kind of just feels like that sometimes, right? And I just don't make of it. um But it kind of was feeling him and was kind of grieving him a bit. And then it almost felt like, um okay, he's now having an, this him that I'm connecting with is having his own experience. And in that experience, my consciousness died and we're connecting in this. And like I said, I don't know, but it was just like an emotional exchange, a beautiful thing. And it just was what it was. So I don't want to give away what's coming in the book, but I think I'm going to a little bit. Do you know the Orc-Or theory, the Stuart Hammeroff, Roger Penrose theory of consciousness? So it's this theory that every single neuron in your body inside of it has these filaments called microtubules. And they're like lattice, they're like structure. And in fact, there was a, I forget what the name of the movie was, but it was one those animated movies about superheroes. was years ago. the, the like bad guy had these like little black things that would like move and manipulate that he could like turn into anything he wanted. Anyway, I don't remember. It was like big hero. Oh, wait, it would, what, it was a movie? Yeah, was a movie, it was animated, and the kid had a little robot that could heal things. Big Hero 6. Big Hero 6, yeah. in Big Hero 6, were these, what was it, like those little black things that would move around and they could manipulate everything. yeah, uh-huh. And the villain at the end uses it. Right, right. Anyway. So that movie came out around the same time that I was learning about this orc-or theory. So I pictured the microtubules as these little black things, because inside of the neurons, they like move things around. They move structures and everything like that. And Stuart Hammeroff is an anesthesiologist, and Roger Penrose is a Nobel Prize winning ah astronomer, I think. He got a Nobel Prize for black holes. And he wrote a book called The Emperor's new mind or something like that. forget what it was, but Penrose hypothesized that there's no algorithm that could explain consciousness. It's just some kind of experience. And I don't understand everything that he talked about in that book, but Stuart Hammeroff read it and he went, okay, he's onto something. And he contacted him and he said, what if the neuron, these microtubules inside the neuron could provide the substrate for this quantum, boy I am butchering this. Basically the microtubules inside the neurons vibrate down to the quantum level. oh And it's connected that way. Do you know quantum field theory? Yeah, so quantum field theory, like that every electron in your body is part of one single electron field. And so, like, could there be communication at that level? Just like all of the cells in our body are communicating and exchanging stuff and all of our molecules are exchanging stuff, you know, I mentioned the epigenetics with our DNA exchanging with the environment outside. Could that be something that goes all the way down to that quantum level thing? So, or theory hypothesizes that human consciousness arises from from within each neuron. It's not from how the neurons are interacting with each other in neural pathways, but it's within each neuron that there's something going on that create conscious experiences, but it connects you there. So because I've been playing around with these ideas, and I mentioned these later on in the book, they'll come up. you'll come across a metaphor called the seven layer burrito of existence, you haven't quite gotten there yet. By the way, let's just talk about your book for a minute, because you your listeners will be familiar with it, but mine will probably be introduced to for the first time. can you just give a quick, because I'm loving listening to it, and if you just quick introduction to it, and we can dive in from there. The book is called You're Not Broken, Just Rewiring. And despite all the gobbledygook I just said, the point of the book, I wrote it for clients that I work with, that they kept talking about how broken they are, broken they are. I'm like, you know, you're not brokering. You had these experiences and you're adapting, you're changing, and these are like neural pathways. These are habits that you have and you're creating new habits all the time. You're always rewiring your brain. And so something kind of clicked to me and I'm like, let's write this down. So the book is called, You're Not Broken, Just Rewiring. And it's divided into three parts, and I think you're midway through part two right now. I don't know if I've gotten to part two, I mean, on chapter 10, whatever that one is. yeah, yeah, so part two is chapter seven to 12. Oh, okay, yeah. Yeah, and then the first three of those, I bring up these things that I'm kind of ashamed to talk about, although I've been talking about on Infant Sump Thrones for a long time, just the interest that I have in channelers, which, by the way. One of the episodes that I did with you and Doug and Shalice early on, I think was the first time I was on with you guys, she mentioned Wendy Kennedy and the ninth dimensional Pleiadians and I'd never heard that before and I'm like, what? And I just love it. I just fell in love with it. But anyway, so I talk about the way that those ideas from channelers inspired me, but then I go into the science of it. know, like these brought up these ideas, but then I kind of science in order to really kind of ground it, you know. uh And so that's what the second part is. And so if you're just now starting chapter 10, eh then you're just now gonna be getting into that. So I think the chapter that you read that inspired our conversation tonight was chapter nine, which was inspiration on the gene keys. eh And then chapter 10 is gonna be the science of the gene keys. So it'll kind of continue from there. And then part three is just kind of more wild. this is, let me guess about your book for a minute because this is why I'm loving it so much. one, even just the title right there, you know, you're not, you're not broken. just rewiring. think that's so important. And I left you a voice message about this, um, for, for anyone, but especially ex Mormons, I think, I know I grew up with the sense that my feelings were a barometer for my relationship with God or my, you know, maybe it ties into a little bit with. prosperity gospel, but it's also just like, if I was feeling off, and this will tie into the jinky thing we want to talk about, if I was feeling agitated, I am unworthy. I'm doing something wrong. Something's, I'm broken. Something's wrong. I need to fix it. I need to repent. I need to confess. It turned into very much like like scrupulosity kind of thing on my mission where I just had this like OCD need to confess. to fix the agitation inside of me, because I'm like, this agitation, I must not be worthy. um And it's repeated a little bit. um You know, before we started talking, we were talking about my separation um from my wife. And there's this thing of like, what am I doing? Sometimes I get nothing. What am I doing wrong? Or I'm in the throes of grief. And I'm like, I thought I've healed this before. I thought I fixed this. And I love it. Your book starts out with this. uh a metaphor of a dragonfly. Yeah. And which I got from Richard Rudd from the Gene Keys. you got from him. OK. Yeah. Perfect. But I just loved it. I love the beginning. You starting with that. And I don't want to butcher it, but the dragonfly, you know, starts it doesn't start out as a dragonfly. Right. You know, it starts out in a couple of different phases. But I like how you were talking about like it doesn't even know there's a possibility of flight. It just is following an impulse within it. Yeah. It's kind of like, it's a nymph. It's like a little tadpole type thing and it lives in the mud and it's mean. You know, it's pretty nasty, but it's also, it gets preyed on by others, but it's a water breather. And then something happens, some kind of internal transformation where it climbs up a stalk and for the first time in its life, it breeds air. It didn't know any of this. It's just following its internal. programming to do it and then it goes through this molting and transforming and so using that as a metaphor for the times when our lives quote-unquote fall apart where it looks like they're falling apart but we just don't see the molting we don't see the wings growing we don't really know that there's a transformation going on from I used to be underwater and now I'm in air I'm a completely different thing than I was before. What I love about that is you know sometimes you go through these phases where all you can do is just go on instinct, you you feel that impulse, there's something emerging from within you and you can't judge it by what you're seeing around you, you're still in the mud, you can't, and your mind's gonna try to predict so many things, but all those, it doesn't even know the possibility of flight yet, so how can it even predict the future because it's so limited in what it can see, you you're in the midst of darkness, you're you're crawling through. um And so it starts with there, I just, you, you do such a masterful job of blending, uh, psychology, neuroscience, and then introducing some of these more mystical esoteric concepts in a way that feels grounded. doesn't feel like you're stretching into new forms of belief or dogma, but curiosity around and wonder at the world around you. mean, I love, I don't know if you're familiar with Richard Tarnas's book, Cosmos and Psyche, but he talks about holding wonder and where he talks about astrology and wonder and skepticism together in like this tension. And I think your book, you know, so far that what I've listened to has just masterfully like woven all that together. And I just can't recommend it enough. I appreciate that Mike. I mean, think, mean, cause you're, it's, you're recording them on audio. And so, um, you know, we'll include the links in both of our show notes, whatever. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. um, because it, that's why it each, it feels like, you know, each chapter, it's 10, 15 minute, like quick hit and you know, it's easy to, to adjust. They get longer too on in a commute to work, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They do get, they do get longer. But I wanted to lay the ground rules or, like, cause I introduced these ideas and then I use them more in part two and part three, but I established them part one. But anyway, yeah, so thank you. I appreciate your interest in it. No, but I feel like it's been very synchronistic and like, you know, it's like aligned. And then the jinky part was, so I was. So I heard about yeah. So what happened? So you've been hearing people talk about the couple. know, I told you it was my third call to adventure at least with it. They came into my field, you know, maybe a couple years ago and sounded interesting. It was like that little poll where I'm like, OK, maybe. And then earlier this year, maybe just a few months ago, a good friend sent me a podcast episode about it. She's like, you have to listen to this. And but it was an Aubrey Marcus podcast. And I have a really I just I'm not I have my issue. And for these reasons, I feel like, you know, we're talking about holding these things kind of loosely and being curious because you can make anything, you can make anything a cult, can make anything dogma. And I like exploring these things with curiosity and wonder and openness, but also holding them in like it's as a, it's almost like seeing the universe through one fractal. Like, then you, what if we shift the, you know, the, the fractal this way and what if we looked at it through this angle, you know, and there's been so many methodologies, uh, in the past few years, astrology has been big for me. The I Ching I've been getting into the last couple of years, which was kind of interesting. when I pulled it up and saw the I Ching, the hexagrams in this gene keys, I'm like, damn. Um, and anyway, it's kind of interesting with Aubrey Marcus is that, um, that podcast because I went back and listened to it. Finally, was he, what did he interview? He interviewed him. Yeah. And he's a good interviewer. You know, I, uh, I do think Aubrey Marcus holds good space and is a good interviewer. I just think he also is like, so capital T truth. And he's also doing a lot of culty things that give me very much Joseph Smith vibes. And so there was like this avoidance listening to it, but then I listened to it yesterday because it was like, okay, I we'd have this conversation. So I went back and it's a, it's a pretty good episode. I think, I think there could have been. It could have been better, but it was enough to give me an introduction to the Gene Keys. Yeah. Cool. So I don't know if you... Yeah, so then you reached out to me, because you heard me talk about it in the book. You're like, I need it. And you to the Gene Keys website, you got your profile, you shared that information with me. And I sent you one of Richard Rudd's contemplations, because I've got all 64 of his contemplations, which he does in his own voice. the 51st Gene Key. The transformational path of the 51st Genki moves from agitation to awakening and it's the path of initiative. uh You mentioned that when you went to the website and you got your profile, you read what it said there. There's a whole chapter on it. So the book, the Gene Keys, each one of those 64 Gene Keys is its own chapter and there's a lot more information. And you get some of that in these contemplations that you heard that I sent to you. uh But yeah, I came across the Gene Keys during COVID and just, I kind of fell in love with it immediately. Yeah, to me there was even before I heard his voice, but it's his voice really that draws me in. Yeah, I can see that too. Yes. And, um, and the approach he takes, mean, in that interview with Aubrey Marcus, he kind of talks about, I mean, the channeling he did for those and, and like the kind of almost like mystical experiences he was having over, you know, several days when it was like the information was coming through and, um, and there's, it seems like I've really resonated with it. There's a lot of things that, uh you know, the Enneagram is one that was like, couldn't, I'm interested in it, but I couldn't, I don't know, there's different things that resonate with me. Astrology resonates with me. And this is just my path and what has resonated with me, but I can already tell in listening to this, it seems like a really approachable way to kind of explore yourself. Yeah. Do you remember when we were at Jim and Miles and Cammie gave Audra an astrology reading? Yeah, uh-huh. Right there? Yeah, yeah. I remind her of that all the time. Like, I love it. So what's your, like, what's your rising and So I'm an Aries Sun, a Cancer rising, and then a Capricorn moon. Okay. And I'm Aquarius Sun, Aquarius rising, and a Cancer. Oh, so you have the same sun and rising. Yeah. Yeah. You do give off a lot of Aquarius vibes. Yeah. I think so. I hope so. we hit, we, I, I, on the cancer softness. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. So where, where do you want to go? So, so your life's purpose was Gene Key 51 and it's the path from agitation to awakening through the gift of what is it? Initiation. Initiation. Initiation. Yeah. Which very much ties into the Aries stuff, which, yeah, so I was reading through it and listening to it. Very fascinating. So do you understand that shadow gift city structure? A little bit, but maybe it'd good to explain it. It's one of the things I love about the Gene Keys. And I'm also very interested in Enneagram. I'm a seven on the Enneagram. I'm interested in astrology. And kind of like what you were saying with Aubrey Marcus, I never wanna get so interested in these things that they become my new dogma. That I'm like really, really rigid about them. But I don't wanna be closed off to them that I don't get value from them either. And so there was this skeptical part of me when I came across the Gene Keys, because I wasn't sure where Richard Redd was coming from with it. It took me a while to kind of get to know that he's much more humble than. You know, like he goes, I'm presenting these to you as a symbol. You don't have to believe them. You just have to reflect on them and see what your reflection tells you, which I love that approach. And so the thing that I loved was that for each one of these 64 gene keys, the way that he presents them is they all have a shadow, a gift and a city. And it mirrors that uh dragonfly uh progression. So the shadow is when the dragon flies in the mud. And the shadow might be those parts of your personality that maybe you can't see, maybe other people can. Maybe similar to what Carl Jung says about the shadow, but not completely that. But it's these darker, not darker, but lower parts of your nature, those survival instincts that you come up to as a kid. when your world is chaotic and you have to find some balance somehow. So maybe you learned that if you tell the truth all the time, you get in trouble. And so you lie for self-preservation. And you've done that ever since you were a kid. And it becomes so much a part of you that you don't even notice. And I'm talking about myself here. I had this experience with Cammie a couple of years ago where She's like, did you eat that thing from the refrigerator? Which I totally had. And I'm like, no. She's like, I know you did. No, no. And it was like this whole thing is like, why are you saying no? And I had to trace it back. like, you know, I just developed this really bad habit, this shadow of lying about things and even carrying it into adulthood without even like knowing it sometimes. It's just like secondhand nature. So you've got these shadow things and it creates this this way of behaving, but once you become aware of it, and then once you start making different choices with it, the way that I like to think of it is these are all neural pathways. This is all part of our neural architecture, these habits that we have. And so I developed these neural pathways for lying and deceit and whatever, but I can somehow, and I haven't thought this through right now to say what the gift is of lying. But I'm able to turn that into something that, okay, now I can be more honest. Now I can recognize, I can see those parts of myself because this created conflict and I didn't understand the conflict. And then I learned about the conflict. I became aware of it. Okay, now I can see it. Now in those moments, I can lean into telling the truth and I can empathize with people that are still in their shadow. And so like the gift is it provides to me. this insight and whatever it is. And then the city is when it grows even more. It's kind of like a seed, a sprout, and then a flower blooming. And that city is, the way I think about it is when it becomes, the habit becomes so second nature that I don't even have to think about it anymore. It's just like part of who I am. And if it's this really beautiful thing that is uh making the world a better place for me, for people around me, then it just kind of. ripples outward that way. So I really love the way that Richard Rudd approaches the Gene Keys. Every single one of these is you start off with this shadow. In this case, it's the shadow of agitation. And then over time, it becomes a gift of initiative. And I love the way that he talks about it. He uses this hourglass uh analogy, which I'm sure we'll talk about. And then it goes to the city of awakening. and he talks about what that means. So that's kind of the pathway for the 51st Gene Key and that is your life purpose. So real quick, because there's different, you know, I pulled the map of my Gene Keys, right? And it looks very much like the Kabbalah and the like, or like a human design too, you know, has like a similar. He was very involved in human design before he started. Interesting. I'm finding this more accessible than human design already for me. And you know, I've dabbled a little bit in human design, but it's been more dense. been able, but this already feels more approachable and understandable and resonating right off the bat for me. um So you have different, um like life path, it looks like where your crown chakra would be, but then it looks like you have other different uh gene keys for different parts, right? And one might show more of like your wounding, correct? Or like, is that correct? Different? He has a depth. that I haven't totally gone down into, but he's got like the golden path and the pearl sequence and just like these other things, like when you're looking at that profile and you see the four that are like on the outside, like if you're looking at a north, south, east, west kind of compass and then inside you've got all these different uh keys as well that I don't totally know how they all fit together. My sense is that it's all kind of a MacGuffin. that it's all a little bit of just like, I want to put some information out there that's interesting that you'll dig and you'll try to solve these mysteries. And as you're doing it, you're really learning about yourself. And that's what I think the Gene Keys is. Yeah, it reminds me a lot of both astrology, because you have like, you know, we talked about our sun, moon rising, but then you can also dive deep into your Venus and the placements and the different. way the planets were aligned, the alignments that were happening, you know, during your, you know, there's so many different ways you can dive into the nuances, but it seems like the life path one is a pretty key one and it resonated for me right off the bat. And it really was bringing up a lot for me and like my, my therapeutic work in the last few years. So, you know, that, that agitation is something, oh you know, as I was talking about before that I think was one of the feelings I was feeling. most prominently when I was on my mission. Agitation is the shadow and agitation is something that's ever present until you begin to look within. You never really realize the depth of your own agitation. It's like when people first begin to try and meditate. What a shock that is to the system. It's not like when you close your eyes and you relax that you suddenly find it easy and peaceful and calm inside. you know, suddenly you realize the terrible truth about how screwed up you are, how crazed your mind is, leaping from one thing to the next and never giving you a break. It's like a wall of frequency that towers over you like a wave and you can sit with it and sit with it and sit with it. It's a tangled web in there. It takes some courage to plumb the depths of your own discomfort. uh you know, growing up, I was a swimmer and I think without knowing it, I think it helped me discharge a lot of my agitation, you know, just intense work at just working out intensely. Um, but then when I stopped swimming and went on my mission, um, I associated it with being unworthy. I associated it with being anxious, depressed, unworthy that, and it's, that was something to fix in me. How would it come up for you? Would you like get agitated? You'd get annoyed at your companions, at people that would shut the door on you? how did you experience agitation? The feeling to me feels like a... So even the word agitation, here's my experience of it. It feels like simultaneously being... It feels like an itch that I just can't scratch. It's just like a gnawing. That's how I would describe like a gnawing feeling. It like the, the my kind of my route. Yeah. Where, I mean, is it a gnawing? Can you locate it in your body? Is it in your head? Yeah. It feels like if you look at the shot, like kind of like maybe, um, below my belly, but in almost like towards my spine. And it's just like a crawling like ants, but like a gnawing kind of sensation. And for whatever reason, I associated that with unworthiness. So you would have this feeling of uneasiness, agitation, just kind of this discomfort in your lower extremities. You didn't have any stories of like what it was or you didn't project it onto others as if you caused this. You just So he said one of the shadow things that happens with that is harshness. And one of the keys here is the dilemma of this shadow, which is harshness. You see, when you meet discomfort, this tends to be our immediate pattern. We meet it with harshness. And at the shadow level, we do one of two things. We turn and run, or in other words, we distract ourselves and we dive back into our denial in some way and repress the pattern. Or we try and fix the pattern, correct it. oh We tense up and we start trying to resolve it. You maybe we go to therapy, maybe we try yoga, maybe we meditate even harder. It's a natural human tendency. We want to be free of something, so we try and shrug it off. It's like that lovely fable by Aesop about the competition between the North Wind and the sun. And they decide to see who is the stronger by getting a man to take off his coat. And the North Wind blows and blows, but... But the man just pulls the coat tighter and tighter around himself. And then the sun says, OK, now it's my turn. And it comes out from behind a cloud. And the man gets hot. And he just takes off his coat. And we're like this, except we take the harsh approach. But this gene key will teach us how to turn these shadows to our advantage instead of becoming their victim. And I think the harshness was reflected back at me. I think I became so overly critical of myself. Like it was like a self criticism. don't know if I lashed. I don't know if I was harsh too much outwardly as much like I didn't like I suppressed my anger very well. Like I didn't lash out a lot, but it was like a depression. know, anger turns inward kind of turns into a depression. Yeah. So for me, it was this. I mean, the mission was like a pressure cooker for it because it was this feeling of being depressed where I all my energy was being sucked in. And so it was hard for me to get up hard for me to face like that intense Brazilian sun every day. And yet I couldn't just it because of the nine feeling. It wasn't just depression. It was like I needed to. I couldn't just I wasn't never felt content just laying down or like or relaxing or resting, that almost made it worse. It felt better to get up and go, but I didn't want to move either. um And so that was my whole mission. And so you felt like perpetually unworthy because you had this sensation in you. To the point where my mission president, he was just getting sick of me because I would come in and I would confess every little thing. I would go back through my history and be like. Well, what about this or this? And then I'd feel good. Sometimes that would relieve it a little bit. just having someone tell me you're okay. But then I'd be like, but did I confess that fully? You know, and then I would go and the next time we were in interviews, I would like, okay, you know that thing I talked about last time? Um, this, this, and he had no training for mental health. Like, he didn't know what was going on with me. And then he would also shame it. Like, um, you know, lot of it for me was, you know, the image was around masturbation. was like, which I stopped masturbating like a year before my mission, but then would find that I would, you I was always been a sleepwalker. Sometimes masturbate in like a sleep-like, dream-like state to where I didn't know. Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure you were asleep. Exactly. That's I would tell myself. How much did I have control over this? How much did I not? How much was I awake? How much did I not? Could I have stopped it? Could I have not? It was like this like thing, right? And then he, of course he would dig in and he'd be like, yeah, he's like, Mike, like, so when did you start masturbating? I'm like, maybe fifth grade. He's like, wow, you got, you got off to an early start. And I was like, oh, okay. Well, now I felt really, now I feel even more guilty. for, oh but where this really resonated with me is because Even in my therapy work, I mean, so that was when I first encountered it, it's, know, and I feel like the mission was like a pressure cooker for it and a pressure cooker for my nervous system. Like it was, I was very seldom in like a parasympathetic, relaxed nervous system state. It was like a hyper aware state, a windup toy, my whole mission. And I feel like since then it's been trying to unwind it. But there's been a lot of points in my work with my therapist where at one point she's like, Mike, you've gotten really good at feeling the feeling and sitting with it in this, but it wants to be expressed. It wants to be moved. wants to be, you're still trying to fix the wounding, but it's not wounding. You're associating this feeling with wounding. And even in my work with astrology, I was born with a... a sun Pluto opposition and they're both square. It's called a T T square. They're squared my moon and it creates a like a really intense and Pluto is instinct and passion and aggression aggression mostly, you know, like fire and just intention with my son when they're opposites. It's like this it feels that feels like a Pluto is the underworld that feels like dark to me. where the light, I keep going for the sun, but I feel this opposition. there's anyway, different methods of like exploring yourself, right? But that's where I resonate with another way to understand that tension that you've always Yeah, and the more I've realized like, this is not something to be fixed. And it's not something to be, it doesn't mean anything wrong with me. It doesn't mean, I don't need to fix it. I don't even need to like. let go of it. just need it's to be worked with. You see, there are two ways through this dilemma as well. You either wait it out. In other words, you just sit and you watch the pattern like in Vipassana meditation. You outweight the pattern. You just observe it and you observe yourself observing it. You watch your mind struggling and struggling until eventually your mind spontaneously gives up and then the sun comes out and you're through. The Buddha taught that approach. But there's another approach. And it's the core of this process with the 51st gene key, and that's to use creativity. You use the energy and you direct it outwardly in a creative direction. Yeah. Do you know David Hawkins, the book, Letting Go? Letting Go? Yeah. Yeah. Love it. I was actually re-listening to it just a month ago. Yeah. Yeah. I really loved that book. It helped me understand emotions better and it helped me understand letting go better because when I first heard the concept of letting go, I thought, okay, I've got this uncomfortable feeling inside of me. Let's just make that go away. Yeah. Let go of that uncomfortable feeling. And No, I was I was misunderstanding it the way that Hawkins presents it at least is that you let go of the resistance That's keeping it down You you let go of that sense that it's bad or it's wrong or that needs to be fixed and you'd like allow it you you Understand. Okay, there's a reason that I'm feeling this feeling and I'm gonna let myself feel it and I love what your therapist said to you It's not just about feeling the feelings and continuing to think there's something wrong with me for feeling these feelings like do something and express something with that feeling. And that's what he talks about as the initiation, right? Yeah, exactly. The gift. The gift is the initiation of doing something with it. Creatively. And for me, lot of that's been, we were talking about music before, sometimes when I'm feeling agitation, one of my favorite things to do is to, I got this little djembe drum. bang on the drum, get some of it out, but then just sing from that place, right? See if any words wanna be expressed, see if any chance. Sometimes it starts out, it feels almost primitive or primal, it's very chanty, like growling and this, but then sometimes a melody will come out or words will come out or uh something, uh channeling it, working with it, seeing it as a gift. as like a life force that wants to move through me. um If I take the initiation, if I move with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I liked when he talked about that part, he talked about the gift or he talked about the shadow being like the top part of an hourglass and the gift being that narrow neck and then the city being the other big part of the hourglass. Sometimes to really understand the gene key, you have to first of all look at its city from agitation to awakening in this case. And how do we make that huge transition? Agitation to awakening. They seem an awfully long way away from each other, right? I kind of like to see awakening as like an hourglass. At one end you have the shadow, at the other end the city, and in the middle you have the narrow neck of the gift. And from the shadow, you kind of appear locked into the glass, trapped. by the endless cycles of your agitation. But when you look at everything from the other end, from the city, then time itself dissolves. You experience the boundless. So there's no end to that end of the hourglass. It isn't really an end at all. And what's interesting is that the two places where the path to awakening is the same for everyone are the shadow and the city. It's only unique in the middle at the gift. I'm obviously speaking metaphorically here. I'm trying to give you an image for your mind to play with. So when we experience the shadow of agitation, no matter who you are, it's the same. It's uncomfortable. It's persistent. It's human suffering. It's universal. We are all born into it. And then from the other end, from awakening, it's also the same. It's freedom. When one person experiences that freedom, it's the exact same freedom as another person's. No matter how they got there, no matter what expression it takes, no matter what city it's refracted through or what language or no language they choose to frame the awakening with, it's the same experience. It's identical. So isn't that a beautiful symmetry? The shadow and the city are the same for us all. What about the gift then? Well, the gift is the path. It's the neck of the hourglass and it's a narrow path. It's your path through your suffering. And one thing you can say about it, it's utterly unique. It's your path. It's virgin. It's untrodden. It heads out into the wilderness of the inner plains. So guides can sometimes be a distraction. It's tricky to walk your own path because there are so many unconscious influences. That's why this gift is called the gift of initiative. Every gift has this same urge to break new ground. Every gift is inherently creative and original. So how can you follow another? And that when you're moving from shadow to gift, he talked about two different ways of doing it. Basically one is passive and one is active. And the passive way is just like observing and observing yourself observing and just allow it to pass through you. And you're just inert. You're just watching it. But he said that with this particular gene key, when you take action and you initiate, and that's why it's initiation. You're you're creating something from that shadow and it's unique for every single person and that's why he made it narrow That like no one no two people have the exact same way that they express the gift of agitation Because you feel your agitation in your way and you express it in your way and it's gonna be like unique like a fingerprint eh And I loved that I loved that and I'm sure that's what you do. And so it's helping me get more just clarity around that, right? And more confirmation. So it was kind of interesting to read that and be like, my gosh, this, this, this resonates with what I've been going through with my therapeutic process. And also kind of tying into the eaching. It's kind of interesting because of it. read hexagram 51, it, it, know, the hexagrams are formed by two trigrams each and 51 is thunder over thunder. It's the shock. It's the, so you kind of get an image of that, the feeling of like being kind of almost embodying the shock, the thunder. Yeah. Well, we were talking about quantum fields earlier. Quantum fields have something that's called excitations, which I don't totally understand what that is, but I think about it in the same realm of agitation, that there's like some kind of an excitation or an agitation, and from that quantum field comes a subatomic particle. Like the result of the agitations is a subatomic particle. And then the forces of physics, the strong and the weak nuclear force, take these subatomic particles and bind them together into atoms. So even there, you've got agitation. And I love that symbol of thunder and thunder. You know, like whether you're feeling that low inside of you. and how are you gonna react, how are you gonna respond to it? And like every interaction that you have with anybody is some kind of agitation in that way. And then how do you express it, how do you work with it? And when you see that the shadows uh aren't this bad, evil thing that you need to avoid, but the shadow itself is the seed that contains that gift in it, and that that gift grows out of it like the seed. It just changes the way that you view yourself. You're like, okay, yeah, I'm not broken for having this feeling. As lost as you were as a missionary and seeking relief through confession to your mission president and other things, this was a way that you were taking action. You were doing what you knew how to do, what you thought. Okay, I think that this feeling in here means that I'm unworthy and so I think that I need to do this thing to make me worthy and you're trying and it's not totally working. It kind of works, but then it doesn't work and you keep trying. You keep pushing against it, pushing against it until you start doing Mormons on mushrooms and you start singing and you start like, okay, I'm starting to get it. I'm starting to feel it. And it becomes a gift not only for you, but for all your listeners, everybody that you interact with. It's really beautiful stuff, Mike. thank you. Well, and that's where it gave me clarity too. Cause when I'm reading it, so it went in the, and I think in the audio it talks about it too, but when I was reading the description, it talks about that. Uh, so my it's in the life path thing, but my life path is supposed to be one where it's like, there's no, there's no model. can't, I can't follow anyone. I'm meant to initiate. I'm meant to just lead for me and not seek, uh, like models to follow. And that's been, it's been so interesting because. Even leaving the church, like, I, you know, I had researched for so many years. had kind of, uh, you know, gone through each of the individual, like, um, anyway, my, my shell finally broke, but I'm like, I'm still going to be Mormon. don't know how to not be Mormon. Plus I didn't have, I didn't at the time know many good examples of people who left and, know, I, people who I knew who had left fit that. Like the cult structure of like the narrative of. if you leave, your life's going to go to shit. That's kind of the models I'd seen. then I'm, I'm a friend of a friend. went to high school, but he was a few years ahead of me. So we have a lot of mutual friends, but, someone connected me with him. I'm like, this is a model of a guy who, Oh, it looks like he's left the church and is happy. And so I had a phone conversation with him and that conversation was enough to give me the courage to leave. But it's kind of funny. after we'd had that conversation, then I think he got divorced. I think now he's been remarried. I think he's now back in the church. So it's kind of like he's following his own path. you know, I've, I've looked, I've always kind of looked outside for models. Um, and this is just giving me more courage. Like, no, it's, it's within me, you know, even, even when we're talking about the music, like, You know, don't know, know, Doug and I are working on this album this year. I don't know what's going to come of it. And it's not like. But, you know, sometimes I look for models of like, I don't know musicians who start at 45 and release albums. So I don't know if that's like something, and I don't even know if that's what it turns into, but it's just, it's something in me where it's like, I've got songs to express and I wanted to express them. I don't care. Yeah, but you're basing that off of an old Piscean age. We're in the age of Aquarius now, We've got a new blank slate in front of us to ride on. And I love that you mentioned when you were leaving the church, you would have heard that people who leave the church, their life just goes to shit. So you have these expectations and then confirmation bias comes in and you're looking around and you're going, yeah, that person left the church, did shit. Okay. Confirmed, this person confirmed. And it scared you about leaving the church. You're like, is my life gonna turn to shit? And I'll bet if that Mike then looked at your life now, it might've judged it as turned to shit. You know, like you might've looked at it through those eyes back then that you had. exactly, yeah. And then like, okay, yeah, it's true, it's true. I did turn to shit. But when you had the conversation with that guy and he gave you a different perspective, something in you softened. And something allowed you to update the model that your brain creates to expect reality in. So it was no longer just created by those stories of people that leave the church, their life turns to shit. You're like, well, here's this person that kind of goes against that. maybe that can be something different. And your mind opens a little bit. And I bet if you really went through and you looked at all the different steps and choices that you've made, since then you'd see you're exposing yourself to this, I'm learning something new, my mind's opening up a little bit more. There's more possibilities than I thought before because you know, when being raised Mormon, there's many messages that are reinforced over and over and over again and we form these neural pathways. I mean one of the reasons I got into mental health in the first place was because I came across the concept of cognitive distortions. catastrophizing, black or white thinking, discounting the positive, like all these things that you do without even thinking about it, that are just baked into the culture of the church, not just the Mormon church, they're all over, but they're really, really strong in the church. And so I had to recognize, I've got these limitations in my expectations, can I give myself a update on what I expect to see in the world? Anyway, I know and I'm done. I ran out of gas. I can stay here with that because you were mentioned softening and that's what he recommended in that, you know, harshness to a softening. um know, I mean, even not just leaving the church, mean, with. I've been grappling a lot with. um Even when I was Mormon, you so like I got home my home from my mission. I was never the one, like I never really wanted to get married. Um, but I thought that's just the path we take, but I think there's a part of me like looking for models and seeing relationships around me and seeing the like, but no one really looks happy in their relationships. but I'm like, I guess that's what we do. And so we get married and then, but I always felt like maybe there's a different model for it. I don't know. then, so, before we separated, we, we explored open relationships for a little bit, but I remember like, Even even then I was looking for a model like who's doing this right? Who's who's happy in an open relationship at that time? And what are they doing right? Exactly and one when I had a dream actually that worked with with uh my my dream coach um where I was visiting a friend who is also he practices a form of polyamory. I was at his house and he was mixing me a drink but I was like, I don't want I don't want rum or vodka. I want to put tequila in it. um And my, my thought was that like, I can make my own recipe. I don't have to follow his recipe and tequila to me is a fun. There's a lightness to it. There's like, don't have to take it so seriously and I can make my own recipe and I can play as I go. And I think, you know, in reading this jinky, it just gives me more. even now that I'm separated, there's a part of me that's like, like, I like, I love a lot of things about monogamy and I liked a lot of things about being open, but I hated some elements of both. And so I'm kind of in this thing where I'm trying to date, but I'm like, I don't know if I believe in marriage. I don't know if I believe in monogamy, but I also don't love the, I don't know. I'm caught in two kind of worlds with it. And there's parties like, maybe I don't need to figure it out. Aquarian age, Exactly. There's a dragon fly in me that knows how to smell it out and navigate it and trust it. Yeah. I like it. It's good shit, Yeah. So I'd like to just take a pause from this whole idea for a moment and introduce another idea into the mix. Because the 51st Genki is very powerful and it's represented in the I Ching by sudden flashes of thunder and lightning. So it can be both disturbing and yet it can also bring huge possibilities with it. And the idea I want to put to you is that the agitation is not only inside, it's also outside. It comes from the frequencies. the cosmic and celestial frequency field. You see, our solar system moves through space. It's on the move. And as it does so, it's moving through fields of cosmic energies and frequencies. It actually describes a vast spiral arc through the galaxy. Everything is spiraling. And every now and again, just like everything in life, the solar system moves out of one field of energy and into another field. The stars do this, the sun does this, everything is doing this. And this is what the I Ching and astrology is all about, the ebb and flow of these celestial patterns. Well, our planet is moving right now into a new field, and we call this the procession of the equinoxes or the age of Aquarius. The whole solar system is caught up in this change, and new energies are available right now. New currents are coming online that can take us out of agitation. So I'd like you to know that there's great hope coming to our species. And I don't say this to make you dream of a new world or to take your awareness away from the discomfort, but as a counter force, behind the agitation lies a huge energy of great potential and light. It's kind of as though our entire solar system has been moving through a long period of galactic eclipse. And as we move out of the eclipse, So for the first time in thousands of years, the light from the galactic core comes back into view. And the light from that core is already starting to stream back into our consciousness. And it's driving a new inner revolution. And you can see this as a metaphor, but it's also true. It's what's happening externally and internally right now.