Love is the Cheat Code for Every Level (w/Brendan Fitzgibbons)

What if every multiple-choice question in life had the same answer—and it wasn’t “C:" drink a White Claw. It's Love. Brendan takes you from cicada symphonies in his childhood backyard to the Hollywood Hills, unpacking why love is always the move, even when your ego wants to honk, flip off strangers, or buy a fedora.

In this solo ep, Brendan riffs on the hilarious, messy loop of forgetting love, then clawing our way back to it. 

Along the way, you’ll hear about:

✨ The fake sword improv option we all secretly want to try in traffic
 🧠 Why calling your ex a narcissist might just be your ego doing stand-up
 🔥 How to win the breakup without posting thirst traps in the Alps
 💡 Why everything is temporary (yes, even your Cedar Rapids family trip)
 💭 A trippy Hollywood Hills hike that made Brendan realize he was doing just fine. 

RESOURCES
Follow Brendan on Instagram
Subscribe to his Substack                                                                                                      Invisible Sword Store

Transcript

I was hanging out with my friend Nick Hobb, and we were trying to decide what would be the worst podcast of all time, or the greatest podcast of all time, depending on how you see it. And we wanna start a podcast where all we do is talk about last week's weather.

So you just tune in and it's like, Hey, thanks for joining last week's weather. I'm your host Brenda. Fit Gibbons. Here we are. Do let's just recap what we went through last week. Monday, cloudy Tuesday, cloudy Wednesday. Hold on. Curve ball, partly cloudy Thursday, sunny Friday, also sunny. Thank you so much and next week don't forget to tune into our, our special episode.

we will recap all of the weather from the last 12 fourth of Julys. So thank you so much for joining. Thank you guys so much for being here. Welcome to a brand new episode of Spiritual Asshole. I am sitting in the backyard of my childhood home as the cicadas are [00:01:00] ripping through. I'm in the Cicada Village. It seems like we're this super cool jean jacket 'cause this is part of my new persona of. Gangster Spiritual Cowboy. Today's guest is me, and I'm so excited to talk to you guys because I want to talk to you guys about something that's been popping up in my head. So I have been, as you guys know, writing a book about psychedelics, but really what psychedelics do all they really do, the good ones, . If you do it with intention, if you do it with love, they just really get you back in your heart and you don't put them in your butt. They really just get you back in your heart. And one of the things that I've really noticed is how much and how funny it is that despite the fact that we all know love is the answer, it's something that we always have to get reminded of all the time.

So I'm gonna do something a little different this time. I'm gonna read you guys my substack post about this. [00:02:00] Follow me on Substack. This is not just a plug for my substack, it's Brendan Fitzgibbons on Substack crushing it. But I want you guys to read, I wanna read this to you 'cause I pretty much would've just said this to you guys.

Anyways, About 12 years ago, I was reading a Mick Jagger interview and was struck by something he said. He was asked about the tensions and infighting in the Rolling Stones, and he said, and he replied. I'm on drugs. Are you a cop? Just kidding. What he actually said was something along the lines of, I knew I was gonna forgive them at the end of my life anyways, so why not do it Now?

I've come to the realization that we're all going to draw the same conclusion about love. When we're born, we're immediately separated from this place that we came, which is 100% pure, unconditional, perfect love, and therefore, this separation feels painful as hell. Absolutely. So naturally we spend the rest of our lives so we spend the, so naturally we spend the rest of our lives trying to claw our way back there [00:03:00] any way we possibly can through relationships, drinking drugs, religion, physical dominant sex, money, power, any kind of vaping, social media followers, workaholism.

Joining a fraternity chasing fame, and most egregiously that we can all agree on the worst one wearing fedoras. When I saw Joe Dispenza in April in Dallas, he said the following thing, your soul came here to answer the question. Is there anything other than oneness and being human? So many of us replied, yes, sports gambling, it's pretty much won this.

So being the hilarious, stubborn maniacs that we all are, we're stuck in this wild loop, right where we feel love, then we feel separate from it, then spend the rest of our time on earth trying to crawl back to it. And around and around we go. And this cycle keeps repeating. And despite all of us knowing.

On some kind of very deep, intuitive level we still have to be reminded over and over and over that love [00:04:00] is always the answer, that it's at the center of every circle. Because if the circumstances in our lives were multiple choice questions, they most likely look like something like this. circumstance in life.

A boss gets mad at you and calls you on on Zoom, do you a, get super defensive? Quit. Call all your coworkers so they can confirm how right you are. B. Apologize while secretly planning for his murder, C, Google his wife to see if he can. If C, if you can arrange some revenge slash hate sex. D, do nothing.

Continue working there and stay mad at him for the next 20 years. E. Love him. If you're like most people on this earth, your initial response is like, okay, cool. We could throw out E right away. Fuck E. It's definitely not love him. Can I actually murder my boss or can I at least unfollow him on LinkedIn?

And that's what makes us so human though, right, is that we forget, we fumble. For example, even after I've finished writing this piece, that's literally about how love is always the answer. There's still a chance that later on today I'll have fantasies about drop kicking a telemarketer. [00:05:00] This actually kind of came true guys, by the way.

But the goal here isn't to be some perfect love guru and not just, not just because that movie was so bad. The goal is try to fast forward to love as much as you can in the same way that Mick Jagger talked about forgiveness. So the answer to your next multiple choice question will look something like this.

A guy cuts you off in traffic, you honk. He gives you the finger. Do you a honk harder? Give him the finger back. B, pretend to open your glove box and mime removing a fake sword, escalating this in an extremely weird way. C, follow him home and honk at his wife and small children and d, realize he's probably insanely stressed out carrying the unloved rage. His parents handed him. E love him. Sure. Maybe you said be because it sounds awesome and then the visible sword is something you would do in improv class. But if you even consider DNE at this point, it means you're slowly lifting the veil of separation.

I promise you, if you stay in touch with your [00:06:00] true loving nature, you will reach that conclusion more often, especially as you get older, wiser, and learn to let things go. Just know. Just know if you love someone, you can never be wrong, even if. They're holding a fake sword. That's it. I wanna talk about this some more because I love this idea and I think that like, even if you already read this piece on my substack, again, you can't be reminded of this enough.

There's no such thing as too many reminders when it comes to loving someone. Now a lot of you are probably thinking like, well, this could be a form of spiritual bypassing. Just let me address that. First of all, lemme just say it's my birthday today, so thank you. And there's no better birthday celebration that I would want than to be talking to you guys about this right now.

Well, I can think of some other things involving a boat, the Cuban border, and 45 people dancing to Bad Bunny, a private concert by Bad Bunny. I don't even know anything about Bad Bunny, but I'm into [00:07:00] it. Do you think that he would be as popular if he was good Bunny? I don't think so.

Okay. Let's talk about this now for those of you, this idea of well just love them, the spiritual bypassing. First of all, lemme say this, I think it's awesome if you're mad at someone. I don't think any emotion is wrong. If you want to stay mad at somebody your whole life that is on you. But I want you to know that I'm giving you and I'm giving you this 'cause this is like a shortcut for happiness.

'cause the truth is, if you just stay mad at somebody, let's talk about a breakup. If you stay mad and wronged. And a big, really popular thing now is for people to call everyone who they broke up with a narcissist, which is hilarious. Everyone in America is a fucking narcissist.

I swear to God. I love it too. Also, like the idea that you love this person for eight years and then all of a sudden they're a narcissist 'cause he broke up. What changed in an hour? Could it possibly be, could it possibly be [00:08:00] that? It's because they broke up with you. I'm sure it has nothing to do with that.

That all of a sudden they're a narcissist. The reason why I think this is so important is this is a shortcut to your own happiness. This is a shortcut to your own connection, okay? And I just think like you're going to get there anyways, right? There's going to be a period of time when maybe you won't even think about that X anymore, and you'll look back on your life and you'll go, oh, that was actually helpful.

All that anger that I experienced, all that pain actually led me to find this next person that's even better, right? There's this very interesting moment that I'm sure you guys have experienced when you decide to break up with somebody and you both have this feeling, or at least one of you, I've had this feeling where I'm just like, ah, but I really like this person, and it feels like everything, all the noise drops for a second.

Do you know what I'm talking about? And I realize now, looking back on those moments, that's because [00:09:00] you let your ego go about all of it. You stopped holding this person in such an accountable expectation light, where you're like, they gotta be all these things. They didn't do this, so I'm upset at them.

So you had all this drama, right? And eventually you just go, oh yeah, I really love them. So if you have flashes of that, and if you're already getting to that place a little bit, I just wanna remind everybody that you will get there. Maybe it will take until the last second before you die, to be like, finally like, I forgive the DJ I dated, but you're always going to get there because that's where you came from.

So what this article talks about is like the constant, hilarious. human part of us that experiences and knows what the deepest perfect love feels like, gets separated from it and then spends mostly this entire human experiment oscillating between feeling it again and then getting shot back out, feeling it [00:10:00] again, and getting shot back out, feeling it again and getting shot back out.

listen, it's very much. This is an intellectual exercise that I'm asking you guys to do, but it has to be also felt deeply. So I understand why you're like, I just can't, I'm not asking you to bypass your feelings. What I'm saying is, but I am saying the next time that you wanna hold rage against somebody and the next time that you wanna stay mad at somebody, let me just ask you this question right before you die, are you still going to be mad at them?

And also, if you really. Because I know and I'm talking about breakups or even like friendship, relationships, the more that you hold onto anger, the more that I think you lose. from a very selfish place, don't you want to get ahead? A lot of people talk about winning the breakup.

If you really want to win the breakup, you don't need to post a six pack photo of you on the mountains of Iha hanging out. With a bunch of fucking influencers. You don't need to do that. You don't need to post a [00:11:00] story of you with a new hot woman that may or may not be your friend. Who's this person?

Who's Alice? Actually, no one's name Alice anymore. Who the fuck is Alice? You don't need to do that. If you really want to quote win, the best thing you could do is learn to love them. And to fast forward to the place where you accept and understand where they came from. Because here's the thing, no matter what amount of pain this person or this circumstance caused you, there was a reason why it happened, and I really do believe that.

Through that pain of that relationship or through that pain of that experience, it's catapulting you to a freer existence. But you gotta take the bounce that that is the truth. Because if you just believe that the world is happening to you and all these things that are happening to you is just as an unfair, unjust world, then that's the story you're gonna carry with you.

But if you truly believe that anything that's quote bad is happening to you. [00:12:00] Or any kind of pain, your experience is just propelling you to actually look at something within you that's still not free. All the world is a mirror to show us where we're not free, Peter Kroon, or it's an opportunity to let more love in.

Okay? And my other question to you is, what other choice do you have? Dogs? What other choice do you have? The most painful thing in your life right now? Think about it. The thing that's driving you fucking crazy. I guarantee you, if there is someone or something that's driving you crazy right now, it's because you're not loving it enough, and I know that that's hard to hear and I know that that's hard and I'm not asking you to be perfect.

That is absolutely not in fact. I think our imperfections are incredible. If it wasn't for our imperfections, there would be no comedy. 'cause we would just be running around, like not running around. We would just be floating around in space, these perfect enlightened beings. And that's fucking boring.

So I'm not asking you to do that and nor should anybody, but I am telling you, and I [00:13:00] heard this great guy, I gotta find this podcast. I gotta find it today. 'cause this was like the most perfect timing ever to hear this I heard David Gaia, G-H-I-Y-A-M. He's pretty, he's popular. Dude. Say something that I think is so awesome. And that was perfect for this podcast episode. He basically said he was talking about this very thing, , he was saying how we need to get to the place of being, giving, which is like aligning with creator energy, which is always unconditional love and unconditional giving.

Okay. So he is like, I get all these messages from people being like, how could you expect me to be giving? To my ex or to my friend who I'm fighting with, they're a psychopath. They're a narcissist. They're crazy. How could you expect me just to be loving and just to love them? How could you expect me to?

And he's like, I'm not even asking you to love them, but what I am telling you is that getting to a giving place with them, getting to a whole place with [00:14:00] them is your only chance. To jump to a reality where the chaos that they're causing you does not exist. Mic drop moment. Because here's the thing, guys, there's only you.

Last episode I said, you are the center of every circle, so there's only you. So when you choose to stop living in a judgmental, angry. Victim place of like, this person is causing this pain. To me, this situation is causing this chaos to me. When you choose to stop doing that, do you know what happens? You jump to the reality where that no longer causes the pain that you're experiencing because it's all coming from you 

where you place your attentions, where you place your energy, Joe Dispenza, right? So when you place your energy on someone and you're like, they're an asshole, they're causing me all this pain, guys. They have to give that back to you. There's no choice. [00:15:00] So again, this is why I'm saying like getting to the multi love is the answer to every multiple choice question.

It's like, dude, this is what's gonna free you the most and try it. If you think I'm wrong and you don't wanna do it, then start with something really small. Maybe it's not your ex today, but maybe it's the thing that drives you absolutely fucking crazy. Traffic is a good one, I think for people who have road rage, road rage issues.

I get it. I think traffic's a really good one, and instead of the next time the person cuts you off and you get super pissed, what happens if you get to. Multiple choice. Answer E on this one. And you choose to love them and say, that person's really stressed out. Really disconnected.

There's a coworker at your job. Who've been driving you crazy? What if you chose to tell a totally different story about them? What if for a couple of minutes, couple of minutes a day, you saw them in a little bit different light? What happens? And guys, this is what is [00:16:00] so important to me and that's, this is why getting older is so awesome is you begin to realize everything in life is temporal.

Everything. And the only truth is love. That's it. Everything is temporary. if there's a relationship where someone's driving you crazy, there is gonna be a moment in time when it's gonna be over. So if a job is driving you in crazy, you're not gonna work there forever. If a hang at someone's house is driving you crazy, you're not gonna stay at that house that much longer.

So if you can start there, that's not even love. That's a fact. If you could start with facts. Hey, I'm not gonna be on this trip this long. I hate this trip. I don't wanna do family trips ever again. Why are we in Cedar Rapids, Iowa? It's actually a pretty good place. But if you start seeing it like that, if family visits are extremely hard for you, I hate to break this to you, or I do wanna break this to you, you're not gonna have a lot of family, a lot more family visits in your life.

You're not, and I know that you like, that can't be true. I'm like, be honest with yourself. How often are you actually seeing your [00:17:00] family? Everything is temporal, everything. So if everything is temporal and someday you're not gonna care about this this much, why not try to get there more now?

And this just gives you a tremendous pause to not be so reactive. And it starts freeing you internally from any pain and any shame that you might be experiencing because you have to know it's just temporal and you have to know that the universe wants you to feel free. That perfect love wants you to go back and touch oneness and to experience it and to remember, I mean, it's just so funny, like the fact that love is always the answer.

I guess what I'll just say is like. It. we often don't think the easy answer is the answer because we think it can't be that easy, right? Like how many songs are All you need is love. How many songs are, how many movies are, it's just love how many musicians are like, there's just love.

And we all hear that. We're like, right, okay, but so what else is there? But this is really true for everything. You wanna be healthy. Eat some good food, some good local food workout. People are like, [00:18:00] no, no, no, no, no. But like, what is it really? Oh, okay. I'll run 12 marathons. I'll do red light therapy, cold plunges, and I'll only eat on every October, and I'll only eat the meat that I, that I skinned myself from an elk on the Joe Rogan podcast.

' cause we don't, because our humanness is like, it can't be that easy. It can't, but guys, it can, Your soul knows it can be that easy. It is just love. And again, if you don't believe me or if you think it is more complicated, I want you to do the next thing, which is think about everybody in your life who lives in love, a really loving person that you know.

I have some examples right Then. I want you to, and by when I say love, I don't just mean with people, I mean life. Like they're excited about the trees, they're excited about a car ride. They're excited and blown away by ice cream. I call these people loves, specifically women ' cause they're fucking magical.

A woman who is in love with life is like the most incredible creature ever invented. [00:19:00] Sorry, robots. You will never cross the threshold of a woman who sees magic in things. It's like the most attractive, incredible quality in the world. I call these women loves. Okay? So hang out with those people. Spend time with them and watch how the rest of reality in the world responds to them.

Isn't it interesting that those people tend to have less problems? Isn't it interesting that those people tend to have deeper relationships? Isn't it interesting that those people tend to be glowing? Why? Because we are just love. I don't care who you are or how much of an asshole you think someone is.

This applies to everyone. Everyone, guys. I don't care.

And the last thing I'll say about this is. You are the center of the universe, right? So what often happens is if you're experiencing pain and you're mad at somebody, or you're mad at a current event, not that it's not good or not that I, not that I love that it's happening, or I think it's okay, [00:20:00] but there is a very good chance the chances are almost 100000% that your anger towards that person.

Your anger towards that thing, your anger towards that event is reaffirming a quality that's already in you that you already have. I'll give you guys the best example of course, which is how many people do you think out there for the last 10 years? Yeah, we're almost at 10 years that have been rage tweeting at Trump and angry at Trump.

What do you think the chances are when Donald Trump dies? That they're gonna stop being angry and everything's gonna be fine? It rhymes with Nero

because I used to be one of those people, you're just gonna find something else to be angry about, but you think it's him, or you think it's your coworker, or you think it's your ex. But what you don't understand is like you are carrying that within you. And again, it's not to say that you support these people or that you [00:21:00] agree with them, but don't let them be the reason why you don't love.

Don't let anything ever be the reason why you don't love. You are here to love, and the excuses that you might have is just diminishing the magic that is already within you. And the more you love every day, the more you care. The more that you show a little bit more compassion to the person who just cut you off to the boss that you're mad at, to the your partner who doesn't do the dishes, the more that you do that you are loosening the buckle that fear and anger and resentment have on you, that's actually diminishing your light, that the incredible magic you have within you is always there.

But that anger, that sadness, that in. And guess what one that I'm really working on is the anger and the sadness and the resentment that I have towards myself. That's a whole nother one too. Don't leave you out of this picture. So I think deep down, we're all kind of mad [00:22:00] at ourselves that we're all like anybody.

We're fighting with shame and self-doubt and insecurity and like all that shit. You also count in this experience. The answer for that one isn't, I should be doing more things. I should be making more money. I should be applying for my jobs. I'm just talking about myself. But whatever you're should yourself today as Louise Louise Hay who always said, we should remove, should from the vocabulary.

Just know that the answer is in the end, you're gonna love yourself anyways. Like some of these amazing, You know, energy healing sessions, I've had epic meditation, psychedelic trips I've had is you're able to step back and look at yourself for the choices you made and realize you really did do the best you could.

And right now you really are doing the best that you can. I don't, I don't care who it is. And when you do that and you step back and you're able to say, oh man, I really love the guy. I really love the girl. I really love the person that got me here. Despite the pain, despite it. In fact, I, [00:23:00] I will tell you, I'll, I'll finish with this as saying like, I had this exact experience when

okay? So I haven't wanna talk about this, but I'll talk about it. Ima do a whole episode about it. It's in my book. I recently had an incredible psychedelic journey where I felt where we came from experienced the full ego death. I felt the perfection of absolute love. Where we're going, where we're coming from.

I dissolve into a dot. It's wild. Okay. And afterwards, I felt like I was a new person. I'm completely a new person, and I had to go do it in the hills of the Hollywood Hills. I walked up this hill, and now if you were to ask me before I did this, this was in June, you were to ask me how am I doing? And you guys have heard me.

I would tell you I'm doing good. But deep down there was this feeling of like, eh, I'm kind of failing. I'm not where I'm at in my life. I am, you know, today I'm 40 blank years old. I should be farther along in my career. I should have a partner. All these things were really like, what's really was running under the show.

But [00:24:00] then after I did this, I looked back at myself and I said, holy shit, I am so proud of that guy. 'cause I was so terrified to do this. That got me to that. Despite all of those thoughts. Despite the shame feelings, the guilt, the childhood baggage, the whatever you want to call it, the rejections in this industry that I've experienced, the tremendous amount of anxiety that I've experienced, I still chose to go up that hill and to tra and to choose transformation.

I, I still, my soul still said, no, you're going. And no matter where you're at in your life right now. There is the larger part of you will always come through and guide you, and the larger part of you has no judgment for anything that you're doing right now. It thinks it's all perfect. So if you want to talk about love as a multiple choice, the answer to every multiple choice, question number, number one should be you.

Okay guys. Sorry my neighbors came, but I just wanted to say we are ending. Anyways. I hope you have the best week of all time [00:25:00] and just know just a little bit more every day. Turn to love as the answer. Your life's gonna be amazing, and I just completely believe in you. It's insane. You're the best. Follow me on Instagram at the Miss Gibbons, and I hope you have the best week of all time.