Man (Un)Caved
Welcome to Man (Un)caved podcast where we explore the complex landscape of masculinity in men. Hosted by facilitator /life coach Shane Coyle, this podcast delves deep into the multifaceted nature of what it means to be a man in today's world.
Join us as we embark on a thought-provoking journey, navigating through topics such as societal expectations, emotional intelligence, mental health, relationships, and personal growth. Each episode features insightful discussions, personal anecdotes, and expert interviews, providing listeners with valuable insights and tools to navigate their own journey towards authentic manhood.
Whether you're a man seeking to understand and redefine your masculinity, or someone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the male experience, this podcast offers a safe and inclusive space for meaningful conversations.
Join the conversation as we challenge stereotypes, celebrate diversity, and embrace the richness of masculinity in all its forms. Tune in to Man (Un)caved and discover a new perspective on what it truly means to be a man.
"Not until we are willing to come out of hiding, will we truly experience our greatest potential"
Need support? Our free recovery services and weekly support groups are here to help both individuals and families affected by addiction and mental health challenges. You don’t have to do this alone. Schedule a free, confidential call today and start the healing process for everyone involved.
www.manuncaved.com
Man (Un)Caved
(Un)scripted with Eric Rubin: Breaking Generational Cycles, The Cave of Shame, and Retrieving what was lost.
A conversation that begins in a treatment center unfolds into a profound exploration of the human spirit's journey from darkness into light. When Shane sits down with his friend Eric, what emerges is a raw, unfiltered dialogue about addiction that transcends the typical narratives of recovery.
This episode delves beneath the surface of substance abuse to uncover the childhood foundations of addictive patterns. Eric courageously shares his experience growing up with an alcoholic mother and a passive father, revealing how these early dynamics created the perfect conditions for addiction to take root. What makes this conversation particularly revelatory is its exploration of how we create false versions of ourselves as protective mechanisms—personas that eventually become their own form of addiction.
The dialogue takes unexpected turns as Shane and Eric examine the role of shame in keeping us hidden from ourselves and others. They articulate how recovery isn't merely about abstaining from substances but about retrieving what was stolen from us—our authentic selves, our capacity for connection, and our ability to stand in our truth. Their insights into transgenerational trauma offer hope that we can break cycles of dysfunction that have persisted through generations.
Perhaps most powerful is their discussion of how healing begins with allowing small slivers of light into our darkness. As Eric beautifully expresses, our purpose may be to "get closer to the divine than any man before, and then to disseminate the divine rays amongst the rest of mankind." This spiritual dimension of recovery reminds us that our greatest wounds, once healed, become the ways we most meaningfully connect with others.
Listen to this episode if you're ready to venture beyond surface-level understanding of addiction and explore the deeper journey of coming out of hiding to reclaim your authentic self. Whether you're in recovery, supporting someone who is, or simply seeking to understand the human condition more deeply, this conversation offers invaluable wisdom about transformation.
Need support? Our free recovery services and weekly support groups are here to help both individuals and families affected by addiction and mental health challenges. You don’t have to do this alone. Schedule a free, confidential call today and start the healing process for everyone involved.
Hey everybody, I just wanted to set the stage with this episode, this is an unscripted episode.
Speaker 1:I had the pleasure of sitting with a good friend of mine, eric, and we just had some really meaningful conversation about addiction, family trauma, shame, recovery, transformation, life, life and I wanted to share this with you. It is a longer episode, so, if you can, please stay to the end, because there are so many gems within this episode that I believe all of us can connect to. So, without further ado, let's get into it. Hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of man Uncaved Shane.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited about today because I'm actually sitting with a really good friend of mine, eric, and this episode is going to be really unscripted because we were and we'll get into all this on this episode today. But we've had some meaningful talks, men's work, everything involved in that, and some great topics came through that. So I thought let's go there, let's be unscripted as fuck, let's just go where we need to go and come out of hiding as men and talk about this topic. So, eric, I'm going to kind of let you take it from here If you want to share anything about yourself, about our relationship, whatever you want to do.
Speaker 2:Of course. Yeah, dude, I'm super stoked to be here. Shane, thanks for having me. Man. Yeah, you know, as you mentioned, we obviously have known each other since I went through treatment and you know it's funny that you, that we start, that we're starting off this way, because I was going to say that I just couldn't tell you how much I've appreciated the time that we've spent together. I mean, honestly, you've been a really huge part of my recovery and I remember it like it was yesterday. You know, the first time that I was in one of your groups and you know I looked a lot different back then, as you can imagine, and you know just the energy that I got from you and the way that you're able to connect with me and just kind of like piercing through some of these layers that I'm sure we're going to talk about. It was something that I had just never really experienced before. So it was very, very instrumental and super impactful in my recovery and my time and treatment. So I really appreciate that. Thanks, brother.
Speaker 1:Oh, brother, that means a lot to me. Thank you, you know, I appreciate it. And then you showing up in that. So that's really what it's about is I learned from you, so we, you know how this goes, but thank you, thank you for that. So, yeah, so went through recovery.
Speaker 2:You know how how long ago was that, if you want to share what was totally yeah, yeah. So I got, I tried to get sober the first time in 2022 and I had hit what I thought was like my rock bottom. As you know, there's just it's not really a bottom, it just like just keeps going. And, um, I took myself into treatment, thinking that I had just kind of had like a bad run and if I got my, my thought process was that if I got my mental health in check, then I'd be able to go back to using and drinking like a normal person, which I now understand is insanity. But so I went into a 90 day program and I didn't take it seriously at all. I was like drinking throughout the entire program. I'm shocked. I actually made it through without getting kicked out and I graduated from the program and I was just telling everyone the whole time friends, family that I was still sober.
Speaker 2:And then a couple months later, I went back out, as I guess you say, and Kat was out of the bag. You know there was no longer a secret that I was no longer sober, but I kind of owned it Like it was this I had like a trial period with recovery and I realized, okay, I don't need that, that's not for me. And I had this weird sense of conviction that I'm sure we all get as addicts. We're like you think you've figured it out, like you figured out how to beat the system, and so I just was in that state of mind for a month, for a year, excuse me and I just kind of went on a crazy tear and by the end of that year now, you know, fast forward to around October, november of 2023, I went right back into that place. I was a year prior, except it was just way worse. So the second time around, I realized, like, how serious it was and it took me, I guess, just that experience to understand, like, dude, this is life or death. You got to figure it out and I so I went back into treatment.
Speaker 2:The second time around, I went back into treatment in late 2023. It finally stuck. And you know so since then I mean, I think right now, in total, I have just under a year and a half sober. I cannot even begin to say how blessed I feel it's a word I never used to use but how blessed I feel to have landed where I did, to have gone through the program I did, to have met the people. I did you, everyone else, that that helped me along the way. And so now I'm just in a place where you know you. You go from a year and a half ago to today. I it's two completely different entities altogether. You wouldn't recognize me at one.
Speaker 1:Thank you for your openness and talking about that and I think it's something that's very interesting. You know, addiction has a point of view and I think you know and I'm just also just speaking from my own experience you know it's the substance and all these. Obviously there's more compulsive, addictive behavior patterns and it's so very interesting and we're going to dive kind of into this. I want to understand more of your journey and, I think, for other people to really understand. So sometimes we get this substance and I use the analogy I talk about this too and you probably heard this Sobriety and recovery and they kind of get interchanged in rooms and people think, oh, sobriety, that's recovery, right, and I love the idea and this is where I do bring up in groups too.
Speaker 1:It's like okay way that I understand it is the sobriety. For my own personal journey, sobriety is the abstinence. I'm just not being, I'm not doing, the behavior I and I tend to use the definition from from the dictionary I'm a little nerdy, but it says to retrieve something lost or stolen that's when I read that and I mean many moons ago I was like that's what the recovery is.
Speaker 1:You pull this out and then you see what's really been going on. And I want to dive into a little bit of that juiciness, because I want to hear now I'm not using great Congratulations, and that is important. I don't want to, you know, invalidate. That is the first thing. Safety, stabilization, let's get away from our substance, whatever. And then there's some stuff that was like buried deep underneath. That Can you share a little bit?
Speaker 2:some of this new stuff, good stuff? Yeah, absolutely you know. So it's funny. I love that you touched on that because, as you said, it's recovery is defined as you know something that was retrieving something back that was lost or stolen and, interestingly enough for me, I had no idea what I had lost or what had been stolen for a lot of my life.
Speaker 2:I'm sure we'll dive into this a little bit deeper. When it comes to all these underlying, you know, emotions and experiences in our past, traumas and things that we carry around with us all the time, sometimes we're aware of it and oftentimes we have no idea. It's even there, right? So it's like, like you said, the first part for me was like, okay, this is, you know, def CON one. I got to get myself sober, I got to stabilize, I got to figure out how to just stay alive. That's obviously the most important part.
Speaker 2:But then once you get a couple months under your belt and you start to realize, huh, well, I've abstained from drugs and alcohol and I'm doing everything everyone's telling me to do and I still feel like shit, or I still want to kill myself every day. What's going on here, right? That's that stuff that you're talking about. And so you know it took me. In all honesty I started to kind of unpack or journey. You know your podcast called man on Cave. I was at the very, very, very bottom of my cave, just complete darkness, couldn't see anything, and I wouldn't say that I even started to move towards exiting the cave until I was probably in my late 20s, I want to say around 28 years old. I'm almost 40 now, but that whole time prior to that in my life I had no idea, absolutely no idea, that I even struggled with addiction ever.
Speaker 2:But be what all the underlying reasons were that I think contributed to why I was an addict, and so you know, I come to find out that, like hold on a second, my mom was a very, very heavy alcoholic. I used to say she was a violent alcoholic. I don't know that I would describe her anymore as a violent alcoholic, just because now that I've gone through my own experience with alcoholism, I understand her experience so much differently. It was a lot of like rage and resentment and hate and why me and my mom this and my mom that? Now it's like I understand that differently. But you know, addiction for me started in the womb and then, from the time I popped out, it's like it was nothing but abuse, like I only really had my mom in my life for the first 13 years or so and that entire time it was just like a horribly toxic relationship between the two of us, which again we can dive into how that ends up stemming into our life.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, let's pause for a second because mom cause I want to paint this picture for mom, dad, mom.
Speaker 2:Mom and dad are both gone. Yeah, they both passed, but I mean I didn't know that. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Actually. So that's another thing, right so, but I was looking at you say it was only mom. Was dad not in the picture?
Speaker 2:Dad was in the picture, but he I would have never, ever described him as abusive. What I've come to understand the relationship with my mother was I can clearly quantify that as abuse. And again, it's through no fault of her own. She was struggling with her own demons, right, but my dad, he was probably the kindest, softest, gentlest, like most nurturing he he had to play. You know we talk a lot about masculine versus feminine. He had to play both roles a lot of the time, sure so I had a wonderful relationship with him. However, even though I look at it now, I wouldn't describe it as abuse. Right, he was on the other end of the spectrum where he was just totally hands off. He was super super passive.
Speaker 1:Okay, even he was super super passive, okay.
Speaker 2:So even though he had all those qualities and those traits and he leaned very feminine forward, which is what people tell me I do as well. Sure, it was this weird dichotomy, this weird clash between these two forms.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I'm going to cut you off right there. No, that's okay, these are important things to notice too, because, even say there's a man there and I think this is something very interesting to understand, even though they're men there but this kind of hands-off passivity, yes, um, can also create a lack of structure. There's no boundaries there, there's nothing, because children love to push up against something.
Speaker 2:Yep, so there's non-structure, and then again in the technical word, abusive.
Speaker 1:It might not be abuse in the way that we could visualize it. Lack of structure could have some abusive quality to it where it's not creating the structure, not creating safety in ways it's just kind of you know, there could be some codependency patterns there. I don't know. You know it could go deeper. So I just wanted to put that because it's something really to highlight um when as you're discussing. So please continue yes, no, absolutely non-structure. Mom is kind of in her patterns yes, behavior and very aggressive you talk about.
Speaker 2:Yes, right, can you?
Speaker 1:explain a little bit more, as you're becoming aware of this, like where do I go with all this stuff?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, and that's the thing is like I was. I was totally unaware of it the majority of my life, normal is what we know, right. So it's like all I understood at that time was just whatever was going on in the house, right. But after years of therapy, going through treatment, all the things that we do that we put into our toolbox, I finally realized like, oh, okay, I've been dealing with this weird mercurial like clash between two opposing forces that are completely opposite, in that my mom was always, like on a thousand, very aggressive. She was abusive physically, mentally, emotionally, verbally, all of it, but it wasn't ever to the point where I would have known back then. That's what it was.
Speaker 2:I thought it was just kind of normal. And then you have my dad, who's like the nicest guy in the world but he's completely hands off. So you know, the clash between those two energies being around all the time essentially formed and shaped my understanding of how I viewed the world.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. On one side, you have a mother dealing with her alcoholism and maybe other compulsive behavior patterns you know unpresent to the child in some ways emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically and on the other side you have this father who is in his own passivity, this hands-off approach, as you mentioned. Well, for that child. Who's there to protect me? Right, I am dependent on you, my primary caregivers, to guide me. I cannot do this without you, and so the child can interpret this as I'm unsafe, I'm not cared for, I'm not seen, I'm not loved, I'm not accepted, accepted and so on like, sometimes doing nothing is almost as bad as doing too much right, absolutely yeah, landed on me as a man.
Speaker 1:So here you are a boy. I mean, as you start to develop more and you get into adolescence, you start to realize. My son's 12, you know, he's starting to realize he's going to be a man one day. And there's a natural tendency for boys just talking to the boys and the men out there it's that the boy moves away from the mother. So they kind of move away in an energetic way from the mother, the maternal, they go towards the father. But here's dad. And how is dad showing up or not showing up? Wow, I think you brought light. You know you shed light on this earlier. Again, when we're doing this work, um, we have to understand these are human beings too. Mom's a human being, dad's a human being. We're, we're perfectly imperfect. It's not to make them wrong. I think what you did point out earlier is, as we descend, we have more compassion and understanding for their own character, defects or whatever you want to call them.
Speaker 1:There are shortcomings, because we all have them. So let's dive into a little bit of that, eric, because as a boy, and seeing dad loving, caring obviously, and seeing dad loving, caring obviously, but the lack of structure, how, how do you move from this boy to a man where maybe it's like where do you learn about all these things?
Speaker 2:Yep, Yep, I okay. So such a million dollar question. I, first of all, I learned what I would believe to be the first half of my life. Everything I learned was just a product of my environment, so I was kind of like raised by the world, so to speak, right From the earliest memories. I have the second I was old enough to be on my own. I was out the door, sun up, and you wouldn't see me until the streetlights were on. I was around lots of extended friends and family. I had a couple different social circles, the people in school, so that's where I was kind of like acquiring all these tools or these understandings or these behavioral mechanisms. You know again now I had to learn how to sort of unpack as time went on.
Speaker 2:But to your point, like you know, my like I kind of think of, as you're talking about it, I almost think of like the prodigal son right, Like go out and you have to figure out what's up with the world and you come back home. Well, that separation between the feminine, which is where we start, that's the beginning of our journey and where we spend the majority of our our time maturing as animals, as beings, and then, once we have a sense of, you know, self-sustaining where we can, we can do things on our own we break off and now we're kind of supposed to be able to get that understanding, that prototype or blueprint of how to be a man in the world. Well, again, that was right where you say I went to the edge of a cliff and just fell off and I was just like figuring out what to do along the way. Right, I had no clue. So I did learn a lot of that, just as a product of my environment.
Speaker 2:Now again, fast forward to. I almost kind of always look at things as like pre and post. When I started this journey of like inner self, of going inward, because, again, it didn't start until I was like in my late 20s, Everything prior to that, I just it was autopilot, Sure.
Speaker 2:Absolutely From that point on the things that I've learned, that have now kind of reconstructed, reverse engineered, this new understanding that I have what it means to not just be a man but to have a masculine presence, because those are two very different things and I think we get confused.
Speaker 1:Thank you, yeah, these are great. Yeah, yeah, a long episode. So can you on that one, because that's important. So, yes, man versus masculinity Is that the distinction? So let's go into that, because I'm in agreeance with you, but I want to hear from your perspective. Can you tell a little bit more about that, as you're understanding?
Speaker 2:My understanding, and again it comes from everything I've learned along the way. I've been having so many epiphanies lately and this might've been within the last year and a half, two years but man and masculine were the exact same thing. There was no differentiation. I could not distinguish between those two. And then I started to kind of dive deeper into like when you start to understand your inner self, the shadows, this idea of everybody having both a masculine and a feminine side, I'm like, huh, okay, let's do. Let's like do a little deeper, dive into that.
Speaker 2:As a man, it's quite simply the objective version of the more surface level version of what I would say how we kind of delineate between ourselves and females as women, where it's all the kind of like, it's all the like logistics, right.
Speaker 2:It's like as a man, like I have a certain biological profile. I have a certain anatomy. There might be certain roles that, historically speaking as men and of course this has always changed and evolved over time but there's maybe particular roles that my body is designed to do more effectively my mind is going to be, you know, kind of working as a counterpart to the female mind, which means that I might be looking at things from more of like a logical or rational perspective versus an emotional perspective. It's important like that I kind of also distinguish the difference between. Just because that's the case and we have this baseline understanding of like man versus woman does not mean that masculine and feminine necessarily correlate to that, because we all, whether our biologically and again I want to include everybody, not just not just biological male, female, whatever anyone- identifies as whatever they're having that inner energy, that inner sense of masculine and feminine is something that everyone possesses.
Speaker 2:As a man, I have both, I would probably argue. In a lot of ways I have more feminine energy than I do, masculinity in some ways. So the masculine energy, I think now we're kind of talking more on the spiritual level of what kind of energetically it means to experience our lives through the masculine or the feminine. Again, there might be certain roles or certain archetypes that are involved in those, but they don't have to. They're not mutually exclusive with your gender. They don't have with your biological being, they have nothing to do with that Right. And so you know, now I've come to understand, like huh, like, even in my relationship I see like wow, the whole masculine and feminine thing at play has nothing to do with whether she's a woman and I'm a man, because all of a sudden she's making more money than I am and she's got a problem with that and I'm not necessarily fulfilling the role that maybe it was, it was expected of me to fulfill, and these things are happening on a very deeply subconscious level very, very deep within our soul, right.
Speaker 2:So now, all of a sudden, we're not necessarily looking at each other All of a sudden she has to be the more masculine one and I have to be the more feminine one, or vice versa. Right, that can happen in any experience with any two people. So that's kind of like what I believe to now be the difference between being a man and having masculine energy On hold to these concepts and play.
Speaker 1:My whole thing is get in the sandbox, play around with these concepts, see how they work within your life. You know, and I didn't have a father growing up so he was completely gone. My, my, it was kind of actually my my father was, uh, an alcoholic, so he was absolutely gone. So that structure of learning mask and actually, to be honest, I don't, I can't actually be called a healthy masculine in my life at all, and kind of so that child is reaching and I just remember I would hang out with kids on the block, you know, and we would do what they do and and that sense of belonging and oh, is this masculinity? And I was like I got, I got into like tagging at one time, which was a little ridiculous, but even at even at that I was. I was looking for some form of belonging, some form of identity and and not knowing that structure. That's why I brought that up, because I thought it was really interesting when you were talking about the dad who's kind of passive right.
Speaker 1:So then, do you see patterns for yourself of how you might engage in in relationships? It could be romantic, it could be friendships with yourself. Where parameters, where the parameters are a little blurry because maybe we don't, we don't know how to express or you don't know how to express yourself. Actually you express yourself in certain ways and yeah, because of that, absolutely that you were kind of conditioned to, and again, we're just. We are just fish. Fish is in like a fishbowl right, like.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:There's an ocean out there. You didn't know about it. I'm a fish in a fucking fishbowl. I don't know that there's more out there. This is what's called normal. There's no comparative, there's nothing to compare to, to relate to, until you get until you get a little older. For me I could say that when I got a little older, uh, to hang out with some of these kids and guess what they had?
Speaker 1:they had a dad yeah, yeah and then there was a little bit of like wait a minute, what's happening here? Like, yeah, like how does that? Yeah, what is that all about?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, how did that work in your face um so.
Speaker 1:So, if you can maybe shed a little bit of light. And yes, let's dive into we're gonna, we're gonna keep descending. That's why it's really unscripted. So everybody who's listening to follow us, we're taking you on a journey today we have no script for today.
Speaker 1:We're just. I love this deep dive because this is the conversations that you and I get into. Yep, um, just about these very interesting things. We start to wake up and you're like, whoa, look at that, look at that, where did that come from? And and all this stuff, how did that? Again, from the passive dad, because we're looking at men and we can get into the mother stuff too, but with the dad, what did that look like? As far as like how, how did you put boundaries? Did you have boundaries? Did you put parameters? Were you just the Mr Nice guy all over the place? What did you?
Speaker 2:I'm sure you know the answer to that question already.
Speaker 1:I probably do, but I want you to say it, of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like ding, ding, ding, it's like all hitting on the head. Yeah, so a all hitting on the head, yeah, so a couple things. Number one yes, um, boundaries in particular were, uh, I want to say a problem, but they were almost non-existent. I didn't again, these are things. I didn't know the concept of what boundaries are supposed to be sure, where we, where we acquire them, how we understand them and enforce them. So, so, quite naturally, because my dad being the way he was, and because I was trying to veer away from my mother and I was trying to seek safety in my father, I think I just kind of like he imprinted his way of being onto me.
Speaker 2:So I have always been what I would consider to also be a naturally passive person, right, and you know, because that you combine that with, like, the people pleasing aspect of myself, right, and the insecurities, and you know now, as I peel back the layers farther and farther of my mental health and understanding okay, wait, you've had actually pretty wicked ADHD most of your life. You just went undiagnosed for a long time. I wasn't diagnosed till I was in my 30s and depression. I mean, it's just like you're throwing all these ingredients into a blender and this is what you're going to get, right. So for me, I had no boundaries. I was extremely passive. I'm trying to please everyone around me all the time, which I'm assuming is some form of a trauma response, because when I walk into a room, if everyone in the room is okay, then I'm okay.
Speaker 2:And so it's like you know that became kind of my default right. So how that sort of played out in relationships was very like I wish we could just talking about just that.
Speaker 1:just that, all over the place right so distorted.
Speaker 2:I mean so distorted because you think you have a perspective or an understanding that's completely falsified by this sort of lens that you don't know is there right seeing things through.
Speaker 2:And so, while I think I'm really a nice guy and I'm altruistic and I'm this, you know I should be like a catch for all these women because I have a feminine side and I can talk to women. I know a lot of ways I relate to women, more so than most men, and you know something that, on that point, you know, as you talked about, like how we grew up on the school yard acquiring things, and you know those guys might've, those boys might've had their own fathers. Even those fathers are coming from all different walks of life, so it's like who knows what their own understanding of masculine is right.
Speaker 2:That's being channeled down to us. I also think it's interesting Maybe we can talk about it at a different time but the fact that I would. I'd be interested to dive deeper into the idea that your father and my mother were. It was kind of like the yin yang, the opposite of each one.
Speaker 1:I bet you, my mother was abusive in her own ways. I mean, there was physical abuse there.
Speaker 2:So you were getting the whole yin, yang you were getting it all. Yeah, I think it was definitely again.
Speaker 1:So I mean just cut you off, don't lose your spot, but definitely with my mother. I mean you think about the classical alcoholic and codependent. I mean my mom, I think, at the true sense of it, had codependency issues and codependency issues there.
Speaker 1:I mean again looking from her lineage of trauma. And so it just you know, and we look at codependency. This is why I think this is also important to. Codependency is an addictive pattern. It's addiction to relationships. So codependency is rooted out of shame, which I know we're going to talk about too. So it is rooted out of shame, which I know we're going to talk about too. So it's rooted out of shame and the tendency when you're you brought this up. So I want to highlight this for people when we look at it from the lens of you talked about a trauma response, right? So we all heard the fight flight, we heard the freeze for some people, and then there's the fawn, and the fawn is the people pleasing rooted in some codependency, and so we can take that into our adult life and that becomes the pattern where it's more unlearning. I'm probably you probably heard this we're unlearning than learning. Yeah, we are, we are unlearning all the bullshit and I think this is one of my groups I talk about.
Speaker 1:You're all addicted to the bullshit you keep believing, because that's what's in the way of how we're supposed to be, how we're supposed to operate. And there's something that you said I know I'm going to. I love that we're just going off on. It's not too far off. Because you said, you know, I did grow up with a very uh woman household. So I had my mother and I had, uh, my mother's sisters, who were actually very close in my age, because my mom is the oldest of seven. So you know we were close enough in age that you know. So it was a lot of women that I grew up with and, that being that, mom was sorry that dad was gone. You know, men were the scariest place on planet Earth for me. I was also sexually abused by a man later in life, so you know that had its effect. So I never gravitated towards men for safety, for comfort or, you know, to feel belonging, because those are the dangers. That was the clear one not so later.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh shit, I got some mommy issues too, uh, but with the men I never gravitated towards them to for a sense of connection and um, but like you had mentioned so I would gravitate towards women for emotional safety. Now, I don't know about you, I'm just going to go ahead and call myself and come out of hiding. That is a dangerous place, especially when I'm in my addictive behavior patterns. Yeah, because I know how to manipulate that, I know how to use that, I know how to to use that, I know how to get what I want. I can go and you can have sex and I can do all these types of things because I'm that great, loving, emotionally available guy and I don't say no and I'm the yes man and you know all of that shit.
Speaker 1:And that's another thing. Because, as you're looking at it from a sense of masculine, of the absence of masculinity, I don't know how to hold myself and have direction, I don't have focus, I didn't have purpose, I didn't know how to say no. Same deep down, because again, dad's gone, mom is there. Deep down, if so, there's rejection on, not sorry, not rejection, but there's abandonment, dad, emotional deprivation, neglect from mom. So the fear of being alone. The fear of being abandoned, the fear of being left, was so prominent. I had to be a young man because if I say no to you.
Speaker 1:You might be angry, you might leave me and then you're gonna go and then I'm abandoned once again. That little child that is holding on to the story gets ignited. It just triggers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah. No, everything that you just said is like it's so funny. I'm glad we're talking about this because, again, imagine the whole point of what you're doing here. Right, it's like, imagine the amount of people that probably experience the same thing. But we don't talk about it Because, again, you hinted on shame in there, which I know we'll get into, but shame has to be one of the most powerful emotions, if not the most powerful emotion I've experienced, because living in a world of shame is what keeps me buried at the bottom of that cave and what keeps me completely disconnected from my understanding of what we're talking about now.
Speaker 2:So, like you said and I think it's true that what you're describing about how you're going through life and how that's manifesting in relationships, right, was exactly exactly what I experienced, but again, I just didn't know. That's what it was. I was operating under this guise of like thinking that everything that I was doing was like in this magnanimous way, but in reality, it just turns out that I was just like hiding behind this, like avatar that I'd created because of a bunch of shit that was given to me or that I acquired along the way, or whatever the case may be that I had no idea was even there, right. So so to your point. You know, I'm going through my entire life seeking that safety, seeking that comfort, not knowing that's what I'm doing. And, like you said, you marry that with addiction and now we can have a pretty serious problem quick. So my entire life right, and I, you know. Again, I'd be curious, because did you ever know that was what was happening, or did it take you till much later in your life.
Speaker 1:This is good. It took me a while to really understand it. You said something earlier and you talked about everything if. If my outside is good, then my inside is good. So, yep, when I look at that and I'm just using my understanding of that that is the child, right? So the child is so merged with their parents, whoever's their mom, dad, whoever's there. They're merged with them. They don't know where one ends and the other begins, yeah. So mom is happy, then I'm happy. If dad's happy, then I'm happy. If they're not happy, they're not. We don't know that. We can actually be okay if you could be not happy and I can be happy, yes, yes, because we're just absorbed in all of this.
Speaker 1:There's no individualization, there is no self-actualization, and I think that's kind of what recovery is. And the bigger idea of recovery is that we can have the self separate of you mom, of you dad, of 8 billion people. We get to make our own choices, and what I started to really zone in out in my own recovery is something that I think that we talked about in probably one of the first groups. What are the gains? So imagine that all behavior is purposeful. Now, with every behavior, there is an ultimate gain and a payoff. So what is the gain? Let's just use alcohol or drugs or whatever right, and I think you were part of that. What is the game? Let's just use alcohol or drugs or whatever right, and I think you were part of that. Well, you ask the group of people or person and they say, you know, relief or validation, or control, or power, or love or acceptance or belonging or safety, comfort, yeah, okay, great. So what are those things then? These are these emotional needs that we needed as a child.
Speaker 1:So we are constantly reliving this like worst day cycle all over again, reaching everything good outside. This is my whole thing, everything good outside the ego, which is the child within us, what the child first does. So we grasp like. You left me right, you don't leave me right.
Speaker 1:You don't leave me right. You and when you're talking about it from the lens of shame. And this is why I you know, coming out of hiding shame is about hiding parts of ourself. I'm ashamed of that part of myself, so I hide it from the world, and what I do is I create a false self. Now that false self becomes, talk about addiction becomes an addiction because within that false self, I'm guaranteed I'm going to be loved. I'm guaranteed I'm going to be safe. I'm guaranteed. Now I'm attached to this false self as my ultimate God to save me. Save me from what saved me the pain Cause. God forbid. Eric, I don't want you to see I'm flawed. I don't want you to see that I'm imperfect as a human being.
Speaker 2:Cause, then you're going to see who I really am.
Speaker 1:And then, oh my God, you're not going to like me and you're going to leave me and you're going to reject me Right, and on and on and on.
Speaker 2:It just taps into all. It took me a while again to realize that when I went to treatment this time around, I was talking to my therapist. She goes you might be 38 years old, but inside of you there's a nine-year-old who never grew up and who never had any idea what like that a lot of you know. So much of your life went on past that point and that was kind of a wild concept. And so again there was like as you I love that you touched on the idea that we create this version of ourself, this persona that's going to be able to get. It's the gain right, like what am I going to be able to get If I become this person? I get those things. So I'm going to be more of that person, but since I have an addictive personality, I'm just going to get lost in that person and before I know it, I have no idea which one's which. Like, I don't even know the real version of me and how I'm protecting.
Speaker 2:As we mentioned before, we don't always we not.
Speaker 2:Not only do we not always know, more often than not we probably don't know what's actually going on inside of us internally and the reasons why we're our ego is naturally wanting to protect us from these things.
Speaker 2:So, you know, all those behaviors that we're exhibiting throughout our lives that we think are being kind of you know, sort of like they're coming from a different place in our mind. We think it's coming from a place of positivity or it's coming from a place of, you know, confidence. Maybe, for example, in reality, the grand scheme of things, like you said, it's coming from a place of I don't want to let anyone know what I really have going on inside, right, and so for me to your, to your exact point, that's kind of how I operated through my entire life and that's why that transit like when you start to uncover this and when you start to, you know, dive deeper and deeper into that cave and realize what's been buried down there for the entirety of your life to that point and start pulling it out now not only do you not want to show it to anyone else, I don't want to see that for myself, like that's some of the stuff that we have to do deal with on our own right.
Speaker 2:Like, wait, hold on a second. You're telling me. Like you know, I did my inventory when I was doing my steps and and I I was I had like 26 character defects on there and I was fine with every single one of them except one. I saw the word womanizer on the page and I go I'm not a womanizer. What do you mean Womanizer? Are you kidding me? Like I spent my whole life being the nicest, most loving, most caring and I'm like OK, wait a minute.
Speaker 2:I might not have ever laid my hands on a woman, which I never did and I never would. I've never like sexually assaulted a woman and none of these things. But you know, as you said earlier, have I manipulated myself to be able to get some version of what I want? Yeah, huh, yeah. Have I said something that maybe wasn't truthful to be able to get something I want? Yeah, have I put on a different persona or version of myself to get something I wanted? Yes, and, as you said, it's about that game, because even if I'm just lying in bed with a woman for one night, I'm getting that sense of comfort out of that that I never got before and it's going to really boost up my ego. So you know, it's all those things are connected, man, and that's my whole thing.
Speaker 1:Everything is everything. When you start really start pulling back and you start seeing sequence instead of the frame, you start seeing how everything is connected, you're like, holy shit, I've been living my life like this and this is why I think it's important and I love that we're having the discussion. We'll dive deep, um, uh deeper on this topic. But what I really love, and why I love this, that we're having this discussion now, is because addiction gets a certain point of view. There's such a stigma whether whether people are actually saying it or not, it's felt and, I think, because we don't understand what is actually happening. Yes, I mean it. Would you know this idea? If addiction was a conscious thing, there would be no need for treatment centers, there would be no therapy. There would be nothing right for treatment centers, there would be no therapy. There would be nothing right.
Speaker 2:We'd be fine but it is so unconscious and so it goes back to my.
Speaker 1:The second actual definition of recovery is every tree, uh to um. Come back to a sense of consciousness, so carl young talks about. We have to bring that unconscious into our consciousness, because you cannot heal or fix something you don't see. There's no way you're gonna know, and that's the shadow. Those are those disowned parts of myself. We can kind of segue into that. I love it. The universe just works that way. But those are those disowned parts of myself. Why? Because there's such shame, or I was made to believe to be ashamed of that part, so I disowned it within myself because I don't want to know that it's there and and you know, I don't want to have to feel that there and that's the whole thing. There's, there's. You know, I don't know if we shouldn't, I don't know how those words are, but the idea of being ashamed of ourself.
Speaker 1:Ourself is the most beautiful thing. It is the most beautiful thing that we have All the messiness, all the sadness, all the just, all over the place Imperfections.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, it's what makes us.
Speaker 1:So you know, speaking from that shadow part in in these identifications with false self, attach them for survival and of course they were and they're adaptive. Thank god, we created them, thank goodness that we created these adaptive things to survive, we wouldn't have made it. I had to push my feelings down at age two. I had to. Yeah, what was going on in my household? I had to.
Speaker 2:I didn't do that consciously as a two-year-old, oh my god this is so painful, let me push this away right, your brain's like we're good here. Yeah, my brain, and that's what's so crazy?
Speaker 1:because our brain does that naturally more pleasure, less pain, yeah, yeah and then we like clear out the record. We're like oh shit, put my drugs out of the way, move my behaviors out of the way, and I'm like whoa, there the way. And I'm like whoa, there's all that I've been hiding for so long. Look, you know, doesn't matter how much time I have, you have. I'm still learning, I'm still trying to come out of this hiding.
Speaker 1:That's why this whole thing has come out of hiding, because there's so much. And maybe that's what life is If we can stand in our truth, the more free we will be.
Speaker 2:yeah it will be uncomfortable guaranteed yeah it's some of the hardest work I've ever had to do, you know, and it's like, as you were saying, that I was kind of envisioning, like I'm all about visuals, I'm all about metaphors and I'm thinking about that cave, right, and you know, as you touched on it, I like to call it having a white belt mentality. No matter, I could be a triple black belt in jiu-Jitsu, but every time I walk into the dojo I have a white belt, as far as I'm concerned, as far as everyone else is concerned, and so you're always learning from that place, right? And so a lot of this, you know, just because we're having the conversation to this point in our lives, of what we have accumulated, the knowledge that we've acquired, what we've experienced, has given us a certain perspective. It's not like we're at the edge of some understanding and that's all we're going to ever understand. That's that it just keeps going and going and going, right. So it's like this idea of this cave, when I normally would visualize it, it's like there's a bottom and there's an opening, but in reality it's probably just this infinity continuum where just some parts are probably going to look darker than others, and I do think that, you know, I try to look at life in terms of and this could be a different conversation, so I don't want to go too far off on a tangent.
Speaker 2:But you know, for me I've changed my view on the ideas of good and bad over the course of my life and right and wrong. Obviously there's some things that are pretty obvious, but I think that it's really more of a matter of light and dark. I think that there's times when we experience darkness and there's times when we experience light, and I think, ultimately, there's light in everybody, there's light in everything, everywhere. All the time there always was, there always will be dim. Or if it's just completely off as far as we're concerned, it doesn't mean it's not there, it just means that we haven't seen it yet. And so for me, that journey that you talk about was kind of this uncovering and sort of uncaving myself, and the more and more that I would, I would realize exactly what you said.
Speaker 2:Hold on a second, this is a me thing. Like this is something that I've had going on inside of me my entire life, that I've been trying to deflect or defend or ignore, whatever the case may be. And now, as a 38, 39 year old, I'm having to face these things quite literally for the first time. That's not easy for anyone, right? So that's why recovery in any form, right so it's such a massive undertaking.
Speaker 2:I've done some fairly difficult things in my life and I can safely say now, after going through two rounds of rehab and actually it's sticking to the point that it has now, god willing, one day at a time. There's nothing, you know, easy, and uh, or I I always say that, um, easy is not synonymous with simple. It's. It could be very simple to understand something, but it doesn't mean that it's going to be easy to accomplish it's. You know, going through the steps with some of the easiest ideas I had to conceptualize, but the work itself was some of the most difficult work ever. So, as you mentioned, you're kind of trying to have to attack it on two fronts, where, first of all, you have to even be able to understand it, so you have to kind of like peel it apart so that you even know it's there, and then, second of all, you have to realize that this is not necessarily just about my, you know, obsession with a drug or an alcohol right.
Speaker 2:Fill in the blank with sex, with food, with gambling, whole nine yards, right? It's not just those things, it's what is all of that that exists with the self, within the self as you talk about, with the shadow that's been designed to protect you. So you know again, for better or worse, it actually did do some good for us. That's why sometimes it's hard to say and disclaimer for anyone listening, if they are struggling with addiction or if they are addicts. I never want to say this as if I'm glamorizing it, but at times there absolutely was moments where it was probably exactly what was saving my life.
Speaker 2:Smoking marijuana at that moment in time was probably exactly what was saving my life, because I didn't have any other tools. I wasn't equipped with anything else to know what to do and, as you mentioned, all I needed to do was where, in whatever's in reach in my vicinity, where can I grab pleasure and where can I completely avoid pain. And so you know that's something that, as we talk about you know shame, and this idea that's why I love that it's called man on cave is in your whole, the whole thing, it all. I love you. It's great, but just like that idea of of coming out of that is is very multi-dimensional.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not just about abstaining from drugs and alcohol that's right yeah yeah, it's come out of hiding in all of these areas that we live in the smallness of who we actually are and we don't live in the weakness and and and where we can. You know and I love that you brought in many ways we can mood alter. Right relationships are a mood alteration. Obviously we got drugs and alcohol, gambling, food, work, money, anything that, everything you know. We got these phones that we can stay buzzed on and dopamine hits all over the place for hours. You know it's and so recognizing what's there. Why sometimes do I need to go and distract? I'm alone. What's wrong? I always get this thing where people talk about and sometimes other groups. It's like boredom. I'm like what's wrong with boredom? What is wrong with boredom?
Speaker 1:yeah because when there's nothing going on and there's not the world of distractions all of that shit starts to come up to the surface. Yeah, that's what it is. It's not boredom. Boredom is neutral. Boredom doesn't have anything.
Speaker 2:It's boredom there's nothing going on.
Speaker 1:Right, it's what comes up from that place. Yeah, I always love the expression that our happiness and our joy is created by the relationship we have to the experience, not the experience itself.
Speaker 2:So relatively everything is neutral.
Speaker 1:I am coming in to the neutral thing and I'm creating an experience, and of course, that experience is from my own understanding of what it is. Yeah, because you and I will have the same experience, but you see it a whole different way and I'm like wait, you see it that way.
Speaker 1:I see it this way, right? So, obviously, start to descend, start to go deeper and deeper and you'll find that little part of you that is scared to be alone. And we, we touched on it briefly. Yes, we're looking at family dynamics, we're looking at family of origin, but you did shed light on that, so I do want to bring this up. This is kind of. This can go down in legacies, man. I mean it could go into great, great, great grandparents. And if you understand the many layers of the word that I use and this is where my training a lot comes from is trauma. Think of humanity itself, right From religious prosecution to racism, to the Great Depression to women who are not allowed to vote.
Speaker 1:I mean, those are going to be traumatic on whoever is experiencing that and that will have an effect guaranteed on that generation. And that's why I think it is important for us, in our responsibility in this lifetime, to show up, to show up and do the work, to look at that and do so we can change that. We are there's. All of us have that self-responsibility. Yes, if we want a different world. If we want a different thing, whatever want, it is your responsibility to be part of that solution, not part of the problem.
Speaker 2:Correct. Yeah, transgenerational trauma, yeah, it's like. I mean, from the beginning of time, for eons, people are. You know if someone is experiencing all the things we're talking about, but we don't have the language for it or we don't have the motivation to figure out what it is, and we're just operating on that sense of autopilot. We're just there's a manuscript and we're just passing it down from generation to generation here. This is how you be, this is how you exist, right, and so that's. You.
Speaker 2:Couldn't have said it better, I think you know, if I had to, I, I like to ponder a lot, I get very existential and I and I like to think a lot about, like you know what, what is the meaning of life and why are we here and what is our purpose? And if I had to nail it down to what I believe to be like one core true purpose that every one of us has, it's exactly what you just said. It's how can I make something a little bit better than it was before I got here? How can I make the world a little bit better of a place? How can I break some of those transgenerational curses and traumas that have just been passed down from family unit to family unit over the course of all time, right, and so you know you can't, you have to have these conversations and you have to do that self-work, like that's.
Speaker 2:You know people think of addiction as like. As you said, it's like there's stigmas around it and it's like a sign of weakness or, my favorite, it's like, well, just can't, you just say no, right, and it's like you'll never understand what it's like from the inner workings of struggling with, you know, a constant craving or obsession for something, if you think there's just an on off switch for it. But you know what's so fascinating to me about that? Number one is that, as an addict, I I now recognize that I have the ability where we are dealing every day with a beast inside of us that we have to contain. It's our choice, but we don't know that that's a choice we think of. These behaviors are all automatic for a long time, right, and so I've kind of come to understand.
Speaker 2:Okay, wait, I recognize what's been going on in my life, what my parents experienced, what my parents' parents experienced, and how that's now all been transferred down to me. I have a choice, though I can do something different with it. I don't have to just take it all and turn around and pass it to the next person in line, right? I have, like you said, almost a moral duty or a civil obligation to try and break those transgenerational curses, right? So, you know, what I like to say oftentimes is that, but having these conversations and getting that out in the open, you know, there's a phrase that I heard once that reminds me of every time I have this conversation is you know, we can't heal, we don't reveal.
Speaker 2:So if we don't know, something is there. You know, it's like the first thing. What do they say? The first step in solving any problem is understanding. There is one right these are just like a little collection of all these little problems that we've piled up inside of us that we don't know we've ever had. So, obviously, step one is to do the searching, it is to do the seeking, it is to go inward, which is going to be some of the hardest work we've ever had to do. Right, because knowledge is not the solution. Knowledge is just sort of the foundation or the baseline of knowing what we need to do in order to create that world for ourselves. And, you know, it's probably why Nike is one of my favorite brands of all time because they figured it out like just do it Right, there's a major difference.
Speaker 2:Action based Action, yeah, all action. Just do it.
Speaker 2:There's a huge difference between the world that we can construct and live within in our mind's eye and our imagination in our brain, versus what we do to actually create a tangible result in the physical realm. Right, two very different things, right? So it's like you know, for me, step one is kind of understanding it. We obviously have to do that, which we're never going to do if we can't talk about it. And now step two is okay we've been able to identify these things. Now what are we going to do about it? Like that's the, that's the meat and potatoes of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's yeah, man, well said. And that's why it's important that us and if it's men or whatever gathering you're sitting at is we have these type of discussions, because I think it's with it. That's why I love my group dynamics, I have to tell you, because you and I are having this discussion right and you're just talking about yours and dad and mom and those kind of those dynamics you grew up with.
Speaker 1:Little timmy over here on the side is like wait a minute, wait, that's not normal yes, yeah, yeah, little timmy didn't know that that's not normal, like oh I thought that was perfectly fine to be like, whatever you know, whatever the choice, yep, and the power lives, and then you see the awakening, and speaking to that we we've been talking, and one of the expressions that I really love is when do we not see our shadow is when we're standing in the dark. When do you see your shadow?
Speaker 1:when there's light peering through and what I have found is in in these, you know healing, whether it's the rooms of recovery, support therapy, whatever you're doing, you are, you're creating a sliver of light into the darkness. Now, the more that you keep going on this path, you start to widen the light.
Speaker 1:So now you see more shadows and more shadows, but it's the best work I've ever done. I mean, I've kind of flipped and I think I kind of hear the excitement in yours. It's like painful, yes, scary, yes, sad, yes, all of that. And how exciting because I'm growing and I'm learning and I'm evolving and I'm changing. And from that place that pebble hits that pond and it ripples and now you share this with your buddy and your buddy gets to feel like how do you do that? Show me.
Speaker 2:And then the wider and the stranger at the market. Right, it just it could be anywhere. It can literally be anywhere.
Speaker 1:It just keeps yep, it just keeps doing that anything yeah I mean again, it doesn't have to just be recovery, just about little little gems we pass to each other. That just kind of creates that little bit of light in maybe the other person's eyes. That wasn't there a second ago and that is making a change. So yes, look, if you want to go global, we need it. Right Like go global, go big right.
Speaker 2:I love that Right right.
Speaker 1:Just like, even in conversations like this, the people you cross paths with shared stuff time with, how do I leave that conversation? How do I leave that? And again, it's not that it has to be perfect. So if it's not perfect, how do we come back and repair it? How do we take responsibility? That in itself accountability. When you start throwing that language at people and you're like, wow, that's mine, no justifications, no recommit, I'm you know and own it, without like going into the well, the ufo's under my backyard, and that's the reason why?
Speaker 1:and I'm gonna duct it in the traffic and the snow that came down in la. It was like nobody gives a shit about all the reasons why. Yeah, and let's keep it moving.
Speaker 2:Own and recommit yeah, that and that takes god. We could probably have this conversation I think we're gonna have to.
Speaker 2:I don't know, but yeah, yeah, so it might be, I know no, no, no, maybe we'll close it off and we'll have a 2.0 version, but you know that takes everything you just described. There's a couple things that in my head that I captured. I wanted to highlight that you were talking about. That takes a certain level of vulnerability. That that's a big one, right?
Speaker 2:Vulnerability is another word that I think, especially in the male culture, within the masculine culture, is a word that is not looked on in a particularly positive way. We associate it with being vulnerable. What are all the things we say? You're being a sissy, you're a girl, whatever it is, we just immediately assume that's like a feminine trait, right? No, there's nothing stronger, in my opinion, than to completely divulge all of who you are to the world, without zero regard for what anyone's going to think or say back.
Speaker 2:That takes uh to, to show the true form of yourself and completely disregard what anyone's going to have to think or say about it takes an immense I mean some of the strongest willpower that you can ever imagine. It's like, you know. That's why, in recovery, a lot of times when people say like, oh, you're weak, make no mistake if you're an addict out there and you're listening to this right now, I promise you every minute that you try to persevere through that disease, through your addiction. That is the most courageous and strongest thing anyone could ever, ever, ever do, right? So, number one, it's like we have to peel back some of these, these misnomers, these misconceptions, the stereotypes or the stigmas, like you said. So it takes a lot of vulnerability and, you know, as you were talking, there was a couple of things. I'm going to keep feeding off the light analogy because I think we're cruising with that, right yeah.
Speaker 2:And so you know I was. I was applying for my master's, which I didn't end up getting. But I wanted to pursue a career in therapy and so I was applying for my master's and I was stuck on the application process for weeks and weeks, and weeks and I couldn't figure out how to close my mission statement. Every time I would sit down, my fingers would just freeze and lock up, my brain would just go blank and I just didn't know what to say in this final part and I'm coming up on the deadline. I mean it's days away and, mind you, at this time I was pretty active in my, you know, pretty heavy in my active using right. But I decided one day you know I can't sit at the computer anymore and I went downstairs and I turned on Netflix and I just picked some random show and some random episode that someone had told me to watch before.
Speaker 2:And you know there was a quote. It was an interview between two people. There was a quote, it was an interview between two people and one of the gentlemen on the interview had asked what do you think is the purpose of life? Touched on that a little bit ago and you know your idea of, like this spreading of the well. I don't know if anyone knows what the true meaning or purpose of life is, but I can tell you that I've heard what I believe to be the closest explanation for it, and I believe he said that he was quoting Beethoven, and this quote has stuck with me ever since it goes the purpose of life is to get closer to the divine than any man before, and then to disseminate the divine rays amongst the rest of mankind and I just remember thinking that I had to, like, say it over and over and over in my head to even get it, because I'm like I know I understand it, but that sounds so complicated.
Speaker 2:Wait, hold on, I'm just like it's like a tape, I'm replaying it over and over again in my head and then I realized, wait, no, that's actually quite simple to understand. Whatever your divine is right, we're all going to have a different understanding of the divine to us. But whatever our divine is, if we can spend our life's mission and purpose, our dedication to getting as close to that thing as we possibly can, and then, rather than keeping it to ourselves, turning around and sharing it with everyone else that we can imagine, if every single person on the earth did that, it quite literally would be a matter of every single person just being their own form of light and wherever they go, they're illuminating that path for someone else along the way. And you know, call me a hopeless romantic or an optimist or whatever, but if enough, if we did that long enough over a long enough period of time, we would accomplish, you know, like in the Kabbalah when it talks about light being like the ultimate source, we would accomplish that.
Speaker 2:It's, it's a, it's a, it's a binary fact. There's no way around the fact that everyone just exhibited that behavior and they made that their life's mission. We would just touch everything and everyone in the world and we would just be this one, completely connected unison being. And I, you know, to me, ever since I heard that, that was definitely what I have come to understand. Even just a conversation like this, you know, it's like that's what I've kind of understood, my, it's my purpose. That's why, when you asked me I'm where, do I sign like I, you know I, I'm I love to have these types of conversations, you know?
Speaker 1:yeah, thank you, yeah, no, that was a beautiful image and I, I don't even. I think we're gonna have to go ahead and continue to have more of these episodes, because there was so many. That's why this one was really unscripted guys.
Speaker 2:There was really no plan.
Speaker 1:I'm like eric, let's just talk and and get it on tape. I love it because the way that we kind of piggyback off and take that concept and run with it over, there and I'm gonna run with it over there like these sub genres.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I think there's this beauty and this poetry that lives in there, there's a rhythm that lives in there, and that's what I really love is, sometimes, you know what, maybe we just don't need to be scripted, let's just get here and let's just talk about our own and we we could definitely dive more into this. It was a great starting point and we could probably make there's probably 10 topics with this and then we can actually run with.
Speaker 1:But when I edit, I'm about to put all that together. Um, yeah, but where you left off, I think, is a perfect place. How can we be that light, how can we spread that light and 100% taking that image with you as you walk through your dailies and the relationships that you walk into or the people that you see?
Speaker 2:Yep, everything you do, right. If you're just exuding that light everywhere you go, I mean it's impossible. Light always wins, right. It's just. If you do it, if you're just exuding that light everywhere you go, I mean it's impossible. Light always wins, right. It's like scientific fact that if there's darkness and you flip on a light, the light's going to win every time. So I just kind of think that that's you know.
Speaker 2:If for me it's become this human connection, these conversations, this gaining awareness of self and understanding and you, and to be able to materialize that into something that I feel I've now had a sense of purpose towards which I didn't really have my entire life prior to now. There is something tangible which, for me, the vehicle or the vessel by which I'm choosing to accomplish that is by helping other people who struggle with addiction, because that is something that now I know. If you would have asked me a year and a half ago, like I said earlier, why me and I have two sisters, which, again, I'm all women too right, we must've been surrounded by mostly women, which is why we have that, that, that the both elements. But you know it's a lot of the why me? Why me? Why me, why me Not. Why not my sisters? Why was my dad not an addict? But my mom was, and I was the only one in the family who seems to have gotten, you know, been stuck with this, this shitty disease.
Speaker 2:And now you fast forward to a year and a half later and it's like you couldn't take my addiction away from me. If you tried, like I would defend it with my life, you know. And so if, if there's any possibility of moving the needle in just an iota of a direction closer to someone else being able to accomplish the same thing I've done. I feel like I've lived my, my life's purpose, I've done my part. So, you know, beautiful, huge for you having me on this, I just I can't thank you enough, man from a group to here to like talking man, but I love to say welcome home, traveler.
Speaker 1:You come a far way to get here welcome my friend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel very home I love it.
Speaker 1:Um, anyway, we will. Thanks everybody who's been listening. Again, this is man and caved. I am shane. This is my good friend, eric. I'm so glad to have you, man. I really did. I just love your wide lens, I love energy. I love your enthusiasm for this work and I'm so excited to have you. And I definitely want to have you again because, like I said we can piggyback on like 10 of those topics, but I don't know if I can keep our listeners going for two hours.
Speaker 2:So you know that's okay, we will be having many conversations Just unscripted and we'll talk more about that.
Speaker 1:But um anyway.
Speaker 2:So this is again.
Speaker 1:My name is shane. This is man uncaved. We need to come out of hiding.