4 Men Share How They Hit Rock Bottom (and got out) - Dr K, Joe Hudson & Connor Beaton

Key Takeaway

Treat rock bottom as a turning point, not a destination. Today, identify one habit you use to escape an uncomfortable feeling—scrolling, porn, alcohol, overwork, or avoidance. Before doing it, set a 10-minute timer and sit with the underlying emotion without trying to fix it. Name what is true: “I feel lonely,” “I’m ashamed,” or “I’m scared.” This interruption builds self-awareness, loosens shame’s grip, and helps you choose a response rather than replay an automatic pattern.

Episode Overview

Chris Williamson hosts Dr. K, Joe Hudson, and Connor Beaton for a candid conversation about rock bottom, ambition, shame, identity, and the work of rebuilding a life. Drawing on their own low points, the group argues that external achievement cannot resolve inner pain; lasting change requires confronting what is true, separating self-worth from performance, and replacing avoidance with awareness.

Full Transcript

Transcript of 4 Men Share How They Hit Rock Bottom (and got out) - Dr K, Joe Hudson & Connor Beaton from Modern Wisdom. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

People of the uk and ireland i'm coming to you live imagine that me on stage in your city dublin is completely sold out but everywhere else is got limited tickets left and you can get yours now at chris williamson dot live this is a custom built live show i absolutely adore it spent over a year working on it so if you're a fan of everything modern wisdom come and see me on stage this october around the uk and ireland chris williamson dot live. This is kind of like my super bowl i hope the people that are watching realize just how much heat.

Is in the room because between you guys you've been the basically top coaches or the sos call to some of the best athletes biggest musicians ceos in the world plus probably a few tens of millions of normal people as well it's a real avengers assemble of personal growth so i thank you for being here this is awesome i've been looking forward to this so there's a an idea from naval ravikant where he says the reason to win the game is to be free of it. So i wanted to talk about how people especially men can win the game let's say that i'm someone who wants to maximize everything achieve as much as possible pull it all of the ambition out of myself that i can i want to wrangle every bit of motivation discipline raw masculine crush the world energy that i can how do you guys come to even think about that how should i achieve that.

Okay let's go y'all are looking at me um yeah so so you know i was i was yesterday you brought up this kind of idea that okay you like climb to the top of the mountain and then you kind of have to go back down right and so i'm sure that joe and connor probably have experienced all the same thing so there's like a there's one set of challenges when you're nothing in life and then as you go through the process of becoming something. You arrive at a different set of challenges so you know i work with so many people who have difficulty finding a partner because there are nobody and then once they become somebody then they have difficulty finding a partner who wants them as opposed to what they become so i think it's a really good framing.

And my kind of overall take is actually like so so it's sort of a so there are things that we do that are adaptive and then they become maladaptive so that that's the process of growing up one of my mentors once told me growing up is abandoning what works over and over and over again because it worked back then and unless you get rid of it. You're gonna run into trouble and i think the interesting thing about this framing of like climbing to the top of the mountain and then kind of having this different set of challenges i think there's actually just one trajectory.

The problem is that when we focus on certain things right so when we focus on willpower and and discipline and all this kind of stuff it actually creates problems in the future. So so i i think that there is a way when you kind of say like tunneling through the bottom you know like you can you can kind of bypass it all but what i so what i've kind of found is that. There is a set of things that you can do to become materially very successful but usually doing those things yeah trying to win the game like the guy at the bottom doing nothing.

Got the top one something got the bottom transcend the game and then fuck the game through the middle yeah so i'd say i'd actually say that there's there's fuck the game is is upward so so i think that this is somewhat true like so i i'm sure these guys do i mean i know they do but you know if you work with some very successful people they have different challenges. They don't they're not necessarily peace peaceful they're not necessarily contented and then we think about this thing like okay if i don't have ambition.

Then how am i going to achieve but then if you use ambition to achieve then you're stuck with this programming which is ambition oriented yes and then you move the goalposts and then you want more and it's never enough. And so i think like like my take on this and i'd love to hear what y'all think is like yeah this sort of works but as we know there's a problem that you end up with at the top that you then have to solve and i actually think.

Fuck the game is the way to go like that that that that's there's one basic way in a simple example of this is people think that. Contentment is something that you get from the outside like i'm hungry i eat something and then i'm content but there's piles of spirituality which have now been supported by piles of neuroscience that contentment itself is a cultivatable skill. And that as you cultivate contentment there are ways to motivate yourself that are not hunger that are not ambition. And so i think a lot of times what we use is like toxic fuel to get to the top and then we achieve what we want and then we're kind of stock in this like polluted environment we've made all these kinds of sacrifices and we've programmed in ourselves in a way that leaves us very unhappy.

And i bet these i mean i already know but like i'm sure if you listen to our personal stories you will see some version of that everybody is at some point on this. Mountain absolutely hundred percent desperately trying to shout at people who are a base camp walking toward the mountain like no no go back fuck off there's bodies on everest yeah there's bodies up there just littered man i mean i do i do think that there's a bit of a quagmire that people experience when they're when they're dealing with this i want to win the game right if you really want to win the game replicate what so many other people have done to make the money right to get the bodies.

But the problem that a lot of people have that i've seen is that they try and get to the top of the mountain by using what i call dark motivation or the fuel fuel right shame based motivation and so they're in pain they're suffering. They hate themselves they don't like their lives and that becomes the fuel for them to then say i want out of here. And the problem is that it really works and it can really work well but it doesn't often lead to the type of satisfaction fulfillment that people are ultimately seeking.

The reconciliation within of well not only do i want to have money but i also actually want to like myself and i want to like my life and i want to like my partner and my kids. And so part of the challenge that people have to bump bump up against is what are you going to do with the accumulation of the pain that exists inside of you that is. Trying to drive you towards that perceived success that will alleviate you from the pain that you're carrying and experiencing not to just rely on the ball rather count for the entire direction of this fucking podcast but he also has a line which is it is far easier to achieve our material desires than to renounce them.

Like if you feel unrequited the world hasn't recognized me i've always been a piece of shit or i've been the person that people have stepped on or ignored or whatever i have all of this pain and i have all of this trauma i want to become something. Is it not quicker to go up and over the mountain than to go straight through it. Not not in my experience i think you can do some pretty amazing things. But it usually requires some pretty severe hardships like them like the guys that and i was one of those guys i'm like let's go to the top and then the guys that i work with it's let's go to the top and usually when men come to work with me they're up at the top and then they're like.

Oh shit this wasn't what i thought i was gonna i still hate myself i still feel like a piece of shit i can't enjoy the money that i've made i won the award and it feels hollow and empty and i went home that night and got super stoned and drank myself to sleep because you know i still feel hollow inside and so. I don't know if it's about quickness it's about how are you going to transmute the suffering that your life is carried that you are carrying inside of yourself into to alchemize it into something more meaningful for you and hopefully for the world like that's the function of what initiation was always supposed to be but i'm curious to hear your what do you think about all that.

So i have a like a slightly different trajectory and so my top of the mountain was like spiritual awakening so i dedicated to that early and just like from twenty years old i just like that was the top of my mountain which was its own hell like it like there was there's the hell of like trying to make a shit ton of money and being a winner that way this was its own particular house so that just to say that my perspective is a little bit different on it.

I think that the couple things that i see in there is that you ask the questions like how do you work with it then number one thing is if you're looking at the mountain asking yourself what it is actually that's gonna work at that point what is it that i actually really want and ask not just like whatever your answer is let's say it's money and say okay cool if i have money is it done. We finished. And then if that's not it no i also want some mouse okay is that done are you finished then and keep on asking that question to find actually what the core of the thing that you want is i think a lot of people start charging up that mountain because they were told to want it because they thought to want it not because they actually really like deeply looked at is this the thing that i want at my core.

The second thing i think is really useful is usually people go for the thing that they see as possible. And they often think the thing that they really want is impossible so i don't know how many billionaires i worked with that are like yeah we could make you know a gi or we can make a ten billion dollar market cap company. But like actually having a happy company now that's not possible or have a happy marriage maybe that's not possible or having happy kids that's not possible actually feels much more within reach much less extraordinary yeah exactly yeah so.

So really look at the things in your mind that you're telling yourself it aren't possible and really take a deep dive into the like what makes that so like really take a look at it. So i think that that is like the best thing to do if you're like looking up the mountain is not to decide whether you're going up or whether you're going through it's to ask yourself what is it that i actually most deeply want here and really spend time with that question. My experience is that question in itself.

Drive you through the mountain instead of up and over them and i think i think it's also missing a like the image is missing something because for me. There was no attention of the mountain it was just bouncing off the bottom. You know and i think that that's for a lot of young men especially in today's culture and climate they don't even feel like they're climbing the mountain they they feel like i can't even get to base camp. You know i'm just constantly life relationships whatever it is i'm just bouncing off the bottom and for me that was my case i was just lost i wasn't particularly good at anything.

And ended up bottoming out in my late twenties and having a kind of rock bottom moment that then put me at that place at the base of the mountain. That asked me that question and so i think i think it kind of depends on the man. And the individual and where they are you know it's like do they even need to they need to get. To the base of the mountain do they need to get to that place where they can even ask themselves that question so i mean how many.

How many guys use that rock bottom moments to either be crushed by or propelled by it i have to assume that a lot of you guys have. Being on the receiving end or maybe being the men yourselves to get the call the s.o.s. call of like okay this is like this is it this is me. Peering over the abyss moment what the fuck do i do i don't even know how to get started so yeah i think both of those things that's the most exciting moment.

Yeah i was i was gonna so it's so interesting cuz i hear my thoughts coming out in two different ways. So so you know one of the things that's really scary is is i mean i work with some people who are pretty successful but. Sixty percent of people that i worked with have not been able to afford a dime and so i work with a lot of like regular. Like basically losers and i i own that term it used to be what i was arguably still am and one of the scary things i hear about these stories right so i think all three of us there's the spiritual hell there's the hidden rock bottom.

Failing out of college take take your pick one of the scary things is. You win yeah i didn't know that i didn't know this. Islander one season one first i think i think i think we should at some point in this conversation really just actually try to have the competition for like the lowest low between the four of us i was just thinking i would i would. I would love to hear everybody's stories like i mean i know that let's do it if everyone's comfortable i'm happy to fucking play yeah can i talk about rock bottom for seconds so.

Here's the scary thing so when i work with people we hear things like this right like you hit rock bottom. And then one of the things really scary things that i see is a romanticization of rock bottom people that i work with. They long for that final crash that will break them like we're talking abhorrent suicidality or everything that they are on the outside that is weak will be sloughed away and a phoenix will rise from the ashes. And they long for this thing and this is the really scary thing about rock bottom.

Rock bottom doesn't exist rock bottom is just the lowest point that you happen to go before you turn around rock bottom can have a basement and in the basement that can be you can go lower and you can go lower. Right so for people who are like here these stories i think we all see the value of rock bottom and i think we're gonna hear about that but rock bottom is the moment that you decide to turn around. It is not this like artificial thing that one day oh if i fuck up my life more and if i fuck it up more one day i will hit that rock bottom and then i'm gonna roll the dice and i will be a god or i will be broken.

And so they wait for that day there's this longing for it this hunger that like oh like i want to be tested right and if i if i fall apart that's fine and in doing so they actually fuck themselves. Because that day will never come. And what rock bottom is and i i know this is why i want to get this out before we hear the stories we're gonna my my prediction is we're gonna hear this from love island to right there's one day that you decide rock bottom is a choice not a place.

I do i do think it speaks to the cultural. of any type of initiatory process for people to test themselves emotionally, spiritually, psychologically. And in the absence of that, the psyche and ultimately the identity and our sense of self still longs for that. So I agree 100%. I do think that it is a choice point. And that's what I say to guys a lot. It's like you don't have to keep going down and keep sabotaging down. At some point, you just have to take a choice.

You have to make a choice to say, I'm going to start, like, this is it. This is ultimately it. And I think sometimes people are waiting for that choice to be made for them. And that's part of the challenge. It's like, well, maybe some external force will make this decision. Maybe if it gets bad enough, then I'll just magically stop. And it's like, no, no, you'll stop when you choose to. You'll shift when you choose to. It's like the story of the dog on the porch, right?

There's an old man sitting on the porch with his dog and the mailman comes to deliver the mail every single day. And every day the mailman shows up and the dog is whimpering and whimpering and whimpering. And finally, the mailman says, why is the dog so... It seems like the dog is in pain. And the old man on the porch says, yeah, the dog's been laying on a nail. And the mailman's like, well, why doesn't he move? And he's like, I guess he'll move when it gets painful enough.

And he decides. And I think that for most people, they're sitting on the nail. And that was me to a tee. It's like, I just didn't want to address the things that were causing me to sabotage and spiral and pull me down. There's a nuance. I think there's wisdom, absolutely, in what both of you are saying. There's this weird nuance and it's the word choice. On some level, there's a choice and it feels like a choice. The other thing that I think people, when you do hit rock bottom and you have that experience, your identity gets cracked.

Who you think you are changes. And there's a choicelessness in that as well. So there's a bit of grace that occurs. And so as there is a way in which you can, this is really geeking out, right? But as there is a way that you can say there is no rock bottom, there's also a way of saying there is a choicelessness of hitting that rock bottom. And I think the thing that gets missed in all of it is the, I'm responsible, I'm responsible, is often slows down the process.

As opposed to what? Who is responsible if you're not responsible? Yeah, that's a good one. I'm excited. I'm looking at the cross-legged side of the table over there. Okay, so many thoughts. My first experience of stepping into this room was in intimidation. My next experience was sort of feeling camaraderie. And now what I'm feeling is that there is something I know that I don't know how to share. The answer is on this table. I feel this very strongly. This not to crack, the answer is here, but I actually don't think that any of us can give it by ourselves.

And what I heard from you, Connor, is you have to make the choice. And I kind of said this, right? You have to turn, think, the rock bottom is the moment that you decide to come up. And then you were saying, yeah, you have to make a choice. And then my first question, how the fuck do you make that choice? And I hear what Joe is saying, because the really scary thing about this, what I mean, this thing I think is like sort of, even rock bottom, I think is on the way up.

Yeah, that's why earlier I said, I'm excited when somebody has that call, because you've already done some of the work. Yeah. So there's this weird, I think that the diagram makes sense, but my sense is like, this is something that we don't talk about. I don't know how to explain. My answer is karma. My answer is this is meant to happen. And that doesn't mean we can get into destiny and stuff. I don't mean destiny, but I'll maybe share a little bit about. So I have a question that I'll toss out and then you guys decide if we want to get to biographies or not.

But how does that choice get made? What is that catalyzing factor? Because when I think about my job, my job is like people come into my office, and I'm sure y'all's is basically the same. And it's like, how do we get this choice to happen? And there's a part of me that even recoils against the word quicker, because I think quicker is feeding into the problem that is going to cause you dissatisfaction at the top. You have to choose it also can cause you problems at the top.

Exactly. Because what's going to happen is if you say, okay, you have to make the choice. So a thousand people are going to wake up tomorrow and they're going to say, rock bottom is when I make the choice. And they're not able to make the choice. I guess I haven't hit rock bottom yet. Well, or we're telling them. So they listen and they say, how, and then they're not able to make that choice. And then they feel even worse about themselves because rock bottom is the moment that you make a choice and look at me, me, fucker, I can't do it.

Other people are doing it, but I can't do it. What's wrong with me? And so I get the choice thing. I mean, and so there's something here that we're all circling around the drain and I'm hoping that we can get. Is there a better framing than making a choice at rock bottom? Is there some other way? If I give a stab at the answer to the question, like, what is it besides? What is it besides choice? To me, it's self-awareness. If you understand yourself enough, just like if I am looking at a watch that's broken and I'm like, oh, how let me understand the watch.

Let me understand the watch. At some point, I'm going to understand it enough where fixing it is going to be obvious. The thing that's going to happen is going to be obvious. I can only say that that worked for me and other people, but I suspect there's other ways too. But my experience is when people start really recognizing how their mind works, what self-abuse pattern looks like, that looking for the bottom is just another way of having self-abuse. Telling myself I have to have choice is just another form of self-abuse.

When they start recognizing the self-abuse and the results of that self-abuse, my experience is then grace, surrender. Something happens where it's beyond them because the same way it's just like that click that happens in your mind and you're like, oh, this is how you fix the watch. That's my experience of it. A quick aside, you've probably heard me talk about Element before and that's because I've started every single morning the same way for the last five years now, which is a cold glass of water with Element in it.

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I am doing these things, or I do feel this way, or I have been acting in this way. I think also an allowing of life, source, God, universe, whatever frame you want to put on it, to have more of an influence in my life. There's this saying, life is making me happen. Instead of I'm making my life happen and all the choices are on me, I think that oftentimes trauma, abuse, being lost, those types of things move us into a mistrust of life and into I'm going to try and control life.

I think part of the place that we reach is I'm going to surrender to life is having an influence on me. I'm going to surrender to the truth of my existence of how I feel and what's happening. Instead of staying in the narration and the story of, well, here's what I think about it, and here's how I feel about it, and here's what I should be doing, and I can't do that, and I should do this, and what the fuck's wrong with me for not doing it this way?

Instead of just sinking into this is true. This is true without story, without judgment. It's just like this is true. This is your frame around no problem, and this is your frame around and that's okay, which is fucking beautiful. The same duality that you guys have got in your own practice when I've done stuff with you guys. It's like this letting go. When I hear him say, see what is, accept what is, it's just another way of saying self-awareness to different ways. It's very cool to hear how what I just said could be interpreted X amount of ways, but the Venn diagram of what you said and I said reduces that.

Oh, that's cool. And then the way he says it reduces it. The territory becomes more precise. Smaller because they're- Iron sharpening iron. Which is really cool. Does anyone want to throw a rock bottom story into the mix and whether anyone's got theirs? Love Island, bro. Let's go. Or peaking. Was that peaking? No, absolutely not peaking. I can certainly give you the peaking, I guess, like the Love Island rock bottom story, at least that one, which was, it's kind of the Champions League World Cup final, right?

Of being a professional party boy, especially in the UK, which is very small and the ways that you can extricate yourself from this highly dense, very competitive, very classist system are limited. The US is 4% of the world's population, but produces 50% of its millionaires last year. The UK is not even on the league. So I go and do this thing. I have this opportunity to go and be the guy, finally. Even the way that I got on was done in the way that the rest of my life was constructed, which was, I'd already done one thing previously, made myself very useful to the casting producers that were a part of ITV generally, the company, Channel 3 in the UK, that was producing the show.

And I'd helped them. I'd found them new people for other shows that they were going on. I'd advised them all of the different nightclubs to go to. They wanted Geordies. They wanted Newcastle kids because it was a big show. Our equivalent of Jersey Shore was ripping at that time. So I'm finding them all cool people because I know everybody that parties around town. So I know the most degenerate or the most outgoing or the cleverest or the whatever. So I've done all of this stuff. And then it's like, hey, do you want to come and screen test for this?

Just come and see me. Come and hang out. We haven't talked for ages. Why don't you just come and do the thing? And before I knew it, I'm on a plane, on my way to fucking Palma Mallorca with a chaperone. And I do this thing. I have this experience surrounded by people that were the person I thought I was. I thought I was this very extroverted lad around town, party boy, biggest name on campus, B-knock, biggest name on campus guy. And the thing when you go and do a show like that is because it's filmed 24 hours a day, what is captured up until 2 a.m.

gets produced and published and broadcast at 7 p.m. the next night. And it's just this permanent treadmill of constant ambient surveillance. But there's no distractions. There's no phone. There's no TV. There's no YouTube. There's no books. There's no friends. There's no nothing. So it is what I later sort of came to reflect on as a fatal dose of contrast. It was me coming up against the projection of me embodied in 11 other people that were living in the house with me. And there's half the number of beds as there are people.

So you sleep with a different girl every night or you sleep with the same girl all of the time. And then I left. And it was a surprise eviction that they were doing to like spice things up or whatever. So you didn't have the time to sort of say your goodbyes that maybe some of the other guys did. So it's kind of a little bit of a chaotic situation. And I don't know whether you guys know, but the south coast of Mallorca, which is where Palmer is, is one of the best night sky viewing spots in the world.

It's got one of the clearest skies that you can. And we finish up and we get taken off to this couples hotel, like a sandals resort type thing, which is where they must have just been able to find some lodging to ship the people out. So you still can't be seen by the press. You can't be seen by anyone. So you're completely contained in this whole thing. And it's been this whirlwind trip. And I had this media lockdown week for a week before I went in, and then I'd been on TV.

And I read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. So I was in a fucking psychedelic fugue state for the entirety of the time that I was on there. It's a bad idea. It'd be a piece of advice to anyone going on reality TV. Do not read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho before you go on. I think that's the best advice, most applicable advice that anyone's going to get. Because I'm in fucking like south coast of Spain. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, like Santiago. I'm just like, I mean, I'm in Spain and I'm taking my shepherd on this trip and I'm seeing the sunrise.

And so I've got no distraction. I'm like, just like swimming in the first book I've read fully for something that wasn't university in like a decade. And like, that was all, it was very chaotic anyway. So I get shipped away and taken off with more of a chaperone. We get deposited at this couple's hotel and we're given a, we had a drink limit because they realized that people would get way too leery and it would be kind of messy and that they wanted more of a fluffy family friendly kind of show.

So they didn't want people to be pissed and like fighting and stuff like that. And I'm given, we had stubby beers, like 330 mil, smaller than a new tonic, 330 mil beers for the entirety of the time that we were there. And I got out and I was given a 500 mil beer. And like you spend the whole day in the sun. There is a bit of you that's, especially if you're around like chicks in bikinis, you're like, give me a beer, dude. You know, I don't even smoke, but I was like, I'll rip a cig.

Like it just isn't the, I don't know. There's some primal part of you that's like, I was going to do stuff. So I get a tall beer. And finally, for the first time in over a month now, including the media lockdown, I'm on my own. And I have this moment of no surveillance, no microphone around my neck, which you needed to put on even if you were going to the bathroom in case you said something interesting or whatever. surveillance and no one with me and I like sort of dumped all my stuff into this room and walked out and looked up at the sky and I've never seen it before and I hope that I get to see it again.

The full Milky Way galaxy just strewn like someone had taken luminescent glitter and thrown it across the sky from end to fucking end because this sort of couple's hotel is middle of nowhere with lights all turned off at night and sort of huts and all that you can hear are crickets like that classic sort of Spanish sound very quiet except for just the chirping of cricket and I looked up and I saw this thing and it was almost like the universe was laughing at me it was almost like after this chaotic thing and reading the book and I'm Santiago and going through all this stuff and what the fuck I thought that I was the person that was supposed to be the person that's supposed to be here fuck I'm not all of these people are the person I thought I was and that means who the fuck am I and like oh my god am I having an exist I'm this is this is where it happened this is classic me I'm having an existential crisis in the middle of fucking love island like that is just the most Chris Williamson thing they could ever oh and there's the fucking Milky Way there's the first time I've ever seen it as a person that loves astronomy and like is obsessed with the stars and fucking interstellar had come out like only a couple of months before so I was still obsessed with that I'm Matthew McConaughey now fuck Santiago and all of this stuff had happened and that it wasn't a and I especially with my health journey I've become very skeptical of acute solutions to chronic problems but in retrospect you look back and you go oh there was something about that I haven't what's that line about life has to be lived forward but only makes sense in reverse I am yet to find a clouds parted and at that moment I knew it's much closer to the clouds parted and in retrospect I knew that at that moment I knew something closer to that if that makes sense anyway I looked up and saw the Milky Way and it was just I can still see it now it was so fucking sick and it ran completely uh sort of whatever that is perpendicular to the way I was looking so just as if someone had painted it on the fucking ceiling and it was the sickest thing and I went home and I was like okay between the book and the existential crisis and the Milky Way it feels like I need to do some more self-investigation and that was me at 27 27 and shortly after that I do six months sober for the first time not that I ever had a particularly big problem with alcohol but I was a party boy so I drank every two weeks but very heavily and then start meditating and start doing breath work and really take things seriously and it's the same coalescent time that Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris and Alanda Barton from the School of Life are coming online and like I'm listening to more Rogan and I get introduced to Naval Ravikant and like all of this stuff starts happening at the same time that sort of pushes me in this in this direction toward paying more attention to myself and being so more self-investigatory um so yeah is Love Island a strange way to talk about rock bottom yeah I suppose but from an existential standpoint like it really fucking felt like it it was like oh you have constructed your entire identity around being someone that you're not and this is about as like about as magnificent and certainly about as public of a way to experience an existential crisis so that's my pull the pin on the grenade and throw that one into the beautiful mix cool yeah thank you for sharing that man yeah oh it yeah thank you it strikes me the identity being such a critical part yeah yeah yeah and the collapse with the projections in the collapse right just having the mirror so inescapable harshly yeah in escape literally inescapable and and in with different accents in different sizes and different shapes all running up to me and going like what's going on do you want to talk about this you know that I mugged that bird off last night like all mugged that bird off last night she's butters fucking hell mate it's good I I mean Brock Bottoms uh there's I mean if I look at my life there's several places where that happened I think like getting kicked out of college and but I think the one that sued me too yeah pretty good brother um uh the the kicked out college is a good story but I don't think it's the one that for this I think the the rock bottom for me was um I meet my wife through like a set of unbelievable circumstances like over and over again we're thrown together it's like so clear that we're supposed to be together um we get engaged really quickly and then we actually have to learn to live with each other and there is a moment where I'm like spending a lot of my time meditating in this house and on 200 acres outside of Ukiah and so like basically my pastime is fighting abusively with my wife meaning like we are being abusive to each other and there is literally a moment where she's like has a miata and she's like revving her engine threatening to run me over and I'm standing over her front of her thing with a pitchfork I think that was like the the rock bottom of of whoever I think I am like valedictorian of the college I didn't get kicked out of or you know really successful in the stock market at the time or this meditator or guy who's like really understands like personal development and I mean I'm like 27 or something I knew nothing but all those identities like collapsed in that moment there was just that moment of like no this is what's happening this is my reality my reality is that like I have learned how to be with a love in this way from my parents this is all I know and I'm repeating the pattern and so whatever it is I think I know however cool I think I am however like wise or successful I think I am no this is actually my reality right here and it was that moment when you know there's that famous thing if you're pointing somebody three fingers are pointing back at you there was like oh I'm not focused on what she's doing anymore I'm only focused on myself like whatever that allowed this to occur I'm solely focused there that wasn't always perfect obviously but it was absolutely changed that position and then the other thing that occurred was there's no amount of meditating that's going to solve this this is not a this doesn't get solved through meditation this gets solved some other way and so I'm going to find that other way and so that started the like the deep investigation of things like Hoffman process and trauma work and somatic work and and so how old are you it's 26 27 years old yeah and so and this was a succession of fights but it was that moment that was like so fucking clear like this is what my life wielding a pitchfork yeah and and getting threatened to be run over you know like it was don't bring a pitchfork she had the better weapon I really if you met her she would use it oh yeah of course I really just am picturing you in like jean overalls with no shirt on fucking Mazda Miata about to hit you and you've got your pitchfork I'm like there's a painting in your future Joe that I'm going to send you and it's going to be that yeah it was brutal I was picturing you in monk's robes meditating your way out of life and then like one of these like warrior monks from like yeah some Chinese monastery who's like master of the pitchfork yeah that I think that was like the lowest point was just that that that recognition of like whatever I think I am I am surely fucking not and whatever ideas that I have that I've read from these books are done from meditation retreats that's also not like I have to like go down to the base and find out what's actually true hmm in other news have you ever noticed how some websites make it ridiculously easy to buy while some feel infinitely harder back in my day I had to walk 10 miles to the local store aren't you younger than me yeah but my dad got a DUI anyway the reality is most businesses just get the website wrong and if your setup is messy you lose a ton of sales which is why I'm such a massive fan of Shopify they power 10% of all e-commerce in the United States including brands like Gymshark, Skims, Allo and Nutanix because when it comes to converting browsers into buyers they are best in class their checkouts 36% better on average compared to other platforms and with shop pay can boost conversions by 50% so upgrade your business and get the exact same checkout that we use at Nutanix with Shopify you can sign up for a free trial period by going to the link in the description below or heading to shopify.com slash modern wisdom that's shopify.com slash modern wisdom yeah so I have some thoughts and some questions do we vote at the end to figure out who hit the world it'll be a poll on the youtube video yeah um so so the one thing that I'm kind of noticing is like this tension between there is a methodology right so like you did a lot of work and there are things right and and there is a way like clearly there's a way that can be taught can be learned can be practiced can be improved yeah and there is this element of like you can do all of it and it's never enough so I'm I'm really curious about how so well said we like so what you know and and and I have my own thoughts about this like the weird thing is like I feel like we all know the answer but I think it's hard to understand well it's hard to explain just to interject that I didn't episode that I never released with a guy called Kapil Gupta a while ago and he knows that I didn't release it he's Naval one of Naval's coaches like these guys very very well esteemed and this is like episode 40 or something and um I got stuck on his there is no prescription instruction and maybe I wasn't then and maybe still I'm not now it's sufficiently uh aware to to sort of work that out but there is this temptation sometimes to continue to circle the drain of like well you know like a lot of it comes down to the the self and the awareness and when the moment arrives you will know and so on and so forth you're like okay does this grow any fucking corn like show me this meeting with reality because this is where the esoteric can kind of become a little um it doesn't feel instructive it doesn't feel like advisory and there to a degree perhaps that's the takeaway it's like guess what there is no prescription like that is it but it felt that that bit to me felt that it seems like at least part of some of what we're talking about here is like there is and also there is this other thing there is this other part and trying to describe the other part because everyone is coming to you for the thing right and if they come to you for the thing and you say well actually there is no fucking prescription you go damn it right well i think the the best mental model that i know to like point to that is here's a button and if you press the button you get a hundred percent peace for the rest of your life you jump in at the button are you hesitant about the button are you like yeah no i'm not going to push that button most humans aren't going to be like yeah boom most people are like hmm so you can circle the drain for a long time because most people aren't going to be like yeah because the whole identity evaporates when you go yeah so so my turn yeah i or not sure i i felt like you got interrupted there i mean i i can yeah so i you know i think we should so just to put a pin in a couple things i think i'm trying to think about people who are watching this and what would be helpful to them and telling them hey ultimately there's nothing you can do good luck i think we do have to be prescriptive at some yeah and i think we should do that absolutely so so i just kind of hold on hold on they won't continue to equivocate for the rest of the yeah three hours so so i go to the end of the episode to find out exactly mr beast i i i tried a million meditation techniques guess which one works yeah so i think i could make that video so um and and so i i do want to get to i just want to acknowledge that i think there is some methodology right like so you have ground breakers because we all figure out ways to consistently intervene with people and whether that's ego dissolution which i think is a huge part of it or you know whatever the techniques like realizing truth like becoming self-aware like initiation yeah the initiation is is a huge part i think there's a lot that has been lost in our society which once we start reintroducing is incredibly powerful so initiation is for me at the top of the list for those kinds of things but let's start with the story i guess um you sure you don't want to go no please so so i you know like joe and i'm sure like you guys you know i had a series of rock bottoms and then there's like the classic rock bottom that i that i sort of share with people which is a rock bottom that looks like a rock bottom um so i you know i'm failing out of college um you know spending every day playing 16 to 20 hours of video games a day and i remember like waking up one morning and sleeping through my spanish final or not sleeping i wake up with my alarm and like my spanish final is today and i just like decided in that moment like i'm not going to go and it's not even that like i'd even like like studied frantically for about six hours the night before and i slept for like two hours and then i was like i'm just not going to go and so i kind of failed out of college and then went to india after a couple of years and then um i really interested so i i was 21 at the time spent 90 days in an ashram and at the end of it i went to one of my what i truly believe to be one of my gurus but he's actually another student at the ashram so i thought he was spiritually way more developed than like the teachers or leaders of the ashram who were um surprisingly narcissistic in many ways there's a study that shows this but yeah i'm sure there is because i mean it's it's so bad um and so i go to my teacher and i say hey this is what i want to do for the rest of my life you know like so i i want to take sanyas i want to become a monk and he's like no he says you can come back if you want to when you're 30 you can take your vows when you're 30 but you need to go back and you need to finish your education.

And he also says, unless you can become exceptional in the material world, you're just going to fail. The path that you want to walk is so much harder than getting to the top of your field materially. So I kind of took that to heart. It was kind of confusing and destabilizing and stuff like that. But I was like, okay, fine. So I'm going to become a monk. And then I go back, and within weeks of returning and making my decision to become a monk, I'm going to be celibate.

No fap. So then I meet my wife. Ferocious masturbation. I'm just saying this is quite a sign for celibacy. As an Indian man as well. So then I go back, and within one week of returning to the US, I meet my wife. I mean, she's not my wife at the time. But I meet this girl, and I had had just a string of terrible, I can't even call them relationships. I would say attempted relationships, if you guys know what I mean, if you guys were ever there.

And so I was in a fraternity and partying a lot and stuff like that. And just nothing had ever worked out. And I meet this girl, and she's a freshman. It's my third year in college, but I'm a sophomore. And so we start dating. I didn't realize we were dating, but we started dating. And then I tell her a couple months in, I was like, I'm sorry, I have to become a monk. And she's 18. She's a freshman. And so I'm like, she deserves to be with someone who's better, and I'm going to become a monk.

And she's like, yeah, whatever. And so that goes on for a while. And then finally, I decide, I realize, I'm sure what you guys realize at some point, that, oh, being a monk is like what's on the outside. And the real work is on the inside, and I don't need to become a monk to do the work. And in fact, people who sometimes dedicate themselves to doing the work in a very visible, outer way, are spiritually dereft and empty on the inside. And then the part of the story that I think is rock bottom is the peak, that I don't know if I've publicly shared before.

So I graduated with a 2.4 GPA. And so I wanted to go to medical school. So I wanted to go to medical school at the beginning, because I was the child of doctors, and being Indian, being a doctor is as high as you can go. So people will think I'm a badass. And not only did I want to go to medical school, can any of y'all guess which medical school I'd set my sights on? Any takers, any guesses? Harvard. Yeah, absolutely. So I was going to be the best, let alone a normal doctor.

The best Indian. The best, right? I'm number one Indian. Number one. So then I graduated with a whopping 2.4 GPA after five and a half years. And I'm like, okay, so now I want to marry this girl. And she wants to marry a doctor because she's Indian too. And the one thing I swore is I'll never end up with an Indian girl. And the one thing she swore is that she'd never end up with an Indian guy. And so we really bonded over that. We were like, fuck Indian people, dude.

Indian guys, mama's boys, so high maintenance, Indian girls, so materialistic. Nah, man. So I really struggle, and I apply to medical school and stuff like that, and I get one interview. In the interview, I have a friend who's interviewing on the same day. So we're going to drive there together. And I go to the interview, and then I come back, and I'm like, I want this more than anything else. And I remember, I was like, I want this so much. So I was meditating, and I've been doing that for a few years now.

And so it was one of the few times that I prayed. And so I was meditating. At the end of the meditation, I was just so fucking desperate. I was like, please. I've worked really hard. I've done... I put my life together. It's hard to get rid of a 0.9 GPA. So I'd done pretty well. And my last semester in college, I took 24 credits, which is twice a regular class load. And I studied for the MCAT and all this stuff. And I was like, I did everything right.

Please, God, let me have medical school. Can I do this? I've met this girl, and I want to marry her, and all this kind of stuff. And then something inside me said, no. It's not going to happen. And it wasn't even doubt. It was surety. And it was like, this is not going to happen. And I broke down crying, and I felt really bad. But it was also something really soothing. And very few times has stuff like that happened to me in meditation. There's stuff that happens consistently, but not like this.

And so it also told me that it's going to take you two years. You have to do this karmically for two years. And it's hard to describe because it wasn't like a voice. I use the word knowing because there is not a good English word for it. It was like I knew in that moment that this was... I was supposed to do this work futilely for some amount of time, which is another one of these things I'd love to get your thoughts on. I think we grossly underestimate the value of futile work.

And so I know it's weird, but... Such an oxymoron. I know. But I think there's something weird about karma. And you have to work... There's a saying that the best way to learn Go is to lose your first hundred games. And we are so focused on winning, winning, winning, winning, winning. I think we have lost sight of the value of losing. And sometimes when I work with my patients, there's this weird karmic angle that I don't have full insight into. But the process of getting to the top, you have to get through the falls.

And there's this weird spiritual principle. I know I'm getting a bit off track from the story, but there's this weird spiritual principle that when I work with people who are more spiritually developed, they'll kind of say that there's an acceleration of karma when you start doing spiritual practice. Can you define what you mean by karma for the people who maybe don't understand it fully? Is that a big question? Later. Yes, sure. Oh, okay. I thought you were just going to give me a single sentence. I was thinking about whether I want to give you a single sentence, but I don't.

So y'all watching... I'm going to crack a pipe. And so it was kind of rock bottom for me, but what I also felt was so calm. I knew that there was an immense amount of hurt coming down the pipeline. That car's coming. She's not stopping. And the other thing that I felt that was really interesting is that's okay. So I felt immense relief, even though something really bitter is coming down the pipeline. And so that's my rock bottom story. It's interesting. I think one of the pieces that you're talking about, like filling your way towards success is so vital.

And sometimes that is in the mundane things. I found that in my life. Whenever people ask, how have you gotten here? It's like, I don't know, a decade and a half of failing my way to where I am and a decade before that of being absolutely fucking frustrated and rageful that I was failing and hating that I was failing and rejecting the failing and beating the shit out of myself for failing. And so there is a kind of reconciliation with, I think, one's relationship to failure that's necessary for the shift that I think we're really talking about.

Yeah. And the most futile things would be depression. And there's a huge amount of research that shows that people who go through a rest of depression and find themselves on the other end are far more resilient than people who've never gone through the depression before. Totally. And so absolutely, that futility, it creates a resilience. And whether it's take your first million words and throw them out, and then you're an author, or lose your first 100 games of Go or be depressed, I think it's a tremendous amount.

And that relationship, if you want to be futile effectively, if you want to be effectively futile, enjoy it. Don't beat yourself up over it. As you were talking about, we have massively undervalued the value of futile work. I had this line in my mind that Sisyphus is still racking up experience points. Yeah. Dude, he's grinding. You want to look like him? Do the Sisyphus workout. He's just up the hill. He's next to the spawn point for the boulder all the time. Yeah. He's just camped out next to the boulder, pushes up the hill.

He's farming that boulder. Yeah, he's farming the boulder. He's, all right, come on, grand finale. The supplement industry is full of products making claims that they can't back, which is why I'm such a massive fan of Momentus. Their co-founder, Jeff Bae, has played in the NFL and saw firsthand just how wildly the quality of supplements can vary, so he built Momentus around a higher standard. Every product from Momentus uses evidence-backed ingredients, transparent doses, and independent third-party testing. Everything is NSF certified for sports, so what's on the label is actually what's in the tub.

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That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com slash modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. I feel like I was way more of a shitshow than you guys. Amen to that. If you're going to win, don't brag about it. No, I got to brag a little bit. No, I really genuinely hated myself. I really genuinely hated—it would make me emotional still today—I hated myself. I was really lost. I didn't know who I was. I was a walking contradiction. If you had met me at 22, I was riding a motorcycle, riding a bright yellow crotch rocket with a helmet that had two-inch metal spikes super glued onto it, going to yoga classes, binge drinking at night, smoking cigarettes, and going to opera rehearsal because I was singing classical music.

I did not know who the hell I was at all. I was trying to grasp onto who could I possibly become in this world of possibilities. I just had so much pain and suffering inside of me. The rock bottom moment for me, I completed my degree in music, in opera performance as a classical singer. Where are you living at this point? I was in Vancouver. At this point, the rock bottom point, I was in Victoria. It's a good place for a rock bottom. It's a great place for a rock bottom.

I was just thinking, you said you were at your low point, but you sound like a blast to hang out with. Oh, I give you that. Opera singer, ride a motorcycle, ride a bike and sing. Yeah. It was always a contradiction because I didn't like who I was, but I was charismatic, and I was able to attract women, but then I didn't feel good enough, and so I'd sabotage the relationships. Anyway, I had just finished my degree. I was living in Victoria, and I had moved there to work with a mentor, and he was somebody that was in his 70s who was French-Canadian.

The background is that for the previous two or three years, I was in a relationship for a number of years, but for the previous two or three years, I had been having a number of affairs. I was just sleeping around nonstop when I'd travel. You're literally telling huge parts of my 22-year-old experience. Okay, there you go. Smoking cigarettes, sleeping around, doing all sorts of shit. I was just watching from the dorms playing video games. You were in the talk chat playing RuneScape. Yeah, I wanted to be that.

Literally, I was playing music, different kind of music, smoking cigarettes, sleeping around, not a motorcycle because I knew I was- Just needed to give you a motorcycle, then you could have been convicted. You could have been- I had a van because I had musical equipment to put in, but yeah. There you go. Everything else is the same, yeah. I had B.O. That's the most Indian thing you could have come up with. Oh my God. That's bloody true. I had a Honda VTR 1000 and B.O., and you had B.O.

Behind the scenes, cheating, lying, weed, booze, massive porn addiction that I couldn't stop. And just tons of cheating. And it sort of came to this moment where, I won't tell the story, but in this very cinematic way, she found out that I couldn't deny it anymore. I couldn't lie anymore. She had caught me before. I had lied. She had caught me again, and I had lied. And then in this moment, it was just like, I couldn't escape the damage that I had cost her. And it broke me.

It really just broke me. But I had so much shame. I didn't want anybody to know what I had done. So she moved out of our apartment. I moved all of my shit into storage. And at that time, I had gotten rid of my motorcycle and I had a 2007 Pontiac G5, which is a two-door coupe piece of shit. But it was black with white racing stripes across the top and a big fin and chrome rims on the side. Uh, it was really bad. And that's the low point.

That's the end of the story. That's the low point, yeah. The low point is I moved all my shit into storage and lived in the car in a Walmart parking lot for a few weeks. Because I didn't want people to know who I had become. I couldn't hold the veil anymore. I couldn't hold the illusion of, no, I'm this good guy. I'm this nice guy. I'm happy. I'm good. I like myself. I couldn't hold that. The veil was broken. It was done. It was dead. And I was just trying to hedge.

And one night under the stars in the backseat of my car, looking out, I'm contemplating taking my life. And it was in that moment where I was like, I don't want to die. Like this is, you know, this is insane. And so a couple of days after living in the Walmart parking lot, I had a conversation with my. My then singing mentor, his name was Bernard, and he was very well versed and trained in Jungian psychology, and he just started to help me. And it became an apprenticeship, and I was 74, I chopped wood, I carried water, I helped with his dobermans, he raised dobermans, and he taught me Jungian psychology.

He taught me about the shadow, he helped me heal, he really saved my life, he really just saved my life. And then, years later, turned it into something. But that was sort of the inflection point where who I was and who I thought I could be just couldn't exist any longer. And Victoria's a good place to hit rock bottom, because there's Bernards there. There's lots of Bernards there. Can I make a Director's Cut DVD request? Can you just add on to the end, the story that you once told me about what it felt like when you'd finally made it from the family perspective, and you looked back on that version of you, and you had to say goodbye, you had to kind of bury that version of you?

I just think that's a really lovely additional story. Yeah, like when I found out my son was pregnant, or my wife was pregnant with my son. Yes, yes. Yeah, so I had this moment five years ago when my son was born, and when I found out my wife was pregnant with him. When we were in Vancouver, and we were staying at a friend's apartment, and my wife was like, I think I'm pregnant. And I was like, okay. And then we found out. And I was having a session with a man that I was working with, and we're chatting, and I was like, I can't.

It's hard for me to hold the life that I have now, because it's so vastly different. Not just externally, but actually how I feel inside. How I feel about myself, and my life, and the existence that I've created. It was so jarring. I just completely broke down, and I was sobbing from a place of joy that almost like I had made it out. Like I had made it beyond. And maybe there'll be another period of my life where I get dragged back into the depths of the negrito, but it really was this sort of full circle moment where 10 years later, I was like, holy shit, I've made it through this.

But it took a long time. It took a long, long time. I describe that moment as realizing that my life was a dream that I never thought possible coming true. Totally. Like just no conception whatsoever that life could be this good. I think it really brought a kind of presence to beauty in my life that I didn't – like I never was – I knew beauty. I sang. I performed. I understood that beauty was a very important part of existence, but I didn't really have a direct experience of like, oh, this is the potency of beauty, that it really can bring you to this place of awe and wonder.

Yeah. That's beautiful. That's so interesting because this is the experience that I don't share with y'all. So my internal experience of making it is like absurdist and memish. It's not negative, but like when you guys talk about this deep beauty, I don't think – so I feel like not to make too many comparisons, but I think I'm luckier, actually. I think you win, by the way. I don't know. The pitchforks. The pitchfork. A love island is hard to top. The painting is going to be good.

But yeah, so I felt – I think the depth of what you guys are talking about, but it has a different color. Like I actually just recently had a conversation with my wife about – and I've gone through some stuff recently, which maybe we'll get to, but just like we're really lucky. We're like so incredibly lucky. And also like when I look at my life, I feel a sense of disbelief and humor. So one time, my wife got an email from a Nigerian prince, and we're like, this is a scam.

Oh, sorry, not a Nigerian prince. Someone from the UAE. This is a scam, right? Except it wasn't. It was like someone from a royal family of a country in the UAE, in the MENA region, was reaching out and wanted to invest in Healthy Gamer. And so like we looked at – so clearly, like you get someone like, hi, my name is whatever. I'm like royalty, and I want to give you all this pile of money. Sure you are. You guys have time to talk. And the real philanthropic, like Ghanaian and UAE community has been diddled by all of the scams.

Like if I'm trying to give my money away as a Nigerian prince, it actually becomes quite hard. Yeah. So we were – and then like we have this moment, right? And then I look at this and I'm like, what? Like this is where – like what is this? And that's the strangest – I mean that's the – when I feel the depth of – you guys are talking about the shattering of the veil, which I think is a great thing to explore methodologically, right? Like how do you get there?

But when I see through the veil, like what I see is something that is just weirdly like absurd and like funny. And I feel an immense amount of joy with it. So I think there's a positive valence, but it's not like grand and awe-inspiring. And not to say that, you know, one is better than the other, but if there are people out there who feel that, feel the absurdism of life – It's funny that you're like marveling at the cathedral and you're giggling at it. Yeah.

And I'm – I am sure he's giggling at it too. I'm definitely giggling. Yeah, there's both happening. You just spend more time with Hanuman than me. That's – Maybe. And I mean, I experience awe too. Like I'm, you know, I can get there, but it's just so interesting to hear. I have a hard time with it sometimes. I have a hard time with it. With what's it? I think, and I've found a lot of people have this experience, but I think I find sometimes that there's always like this little, still background voice of like, when's the shoe going to drop?

Like when's the thing going to happen that's going to take me back to that place of hell that I was in before? And – Wouldn't you be lucky for that though? And look what it got you. Yeah, maybe, yeah. Yeah. If you could double what you got, would you do it? In joy and in love? I mean – Yeah. Yeah. I think it's – again, I think we're like circling the incomprehensible nature of some of this work, like the unexpressible experience of it. I think from like a more calculable place, there was a couple of things that I had to learn.

One of them was I had to learn how to develop some competency in things that helped me to bolster a sense of self-esteem. I didn't – I wasn't good academically. I wasn't good in sports. I was mediocre in most things. And so, I think that there were some things that I really had to build out. But yeah, maybe at some point, like maybe if it all went to hell in a handbasket again, that they're just – it's just like that's the karmic cycle, right? I'm excited because for the first time in my life, I disagree with you.

Okay. Cool. And I'm sure that we don't actually disagree. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. But so, you know, you asked like look at where it got you, and my reaction was no, I wouldn't be grateful for that. And I'm pretty sure we're going to end up at the same place. But like I think the amount of suffering that I had, like I'm good. Yeah. I'm good now. I'm fully sufficient. I don't need more. And I also don't need twice as much love. You know? I'm actually okay.

And I think that's part of this karmic thing, which I will define at some point, where like I get the sense that – and I'm sure that we don't actually disagree. And I love – I think your question speaks to me of the methodology of the reframe, right? which I think is another big point. It is not the avoidance of the thing or getting the thing. It is changing your relationship to the thing itself. If the frame is you have a fear that falling back would be a bad thing, but the realistic outcome of the last time that you fell back was everything that you wanted, the fear of falling back dissolves because you realize that if it was to happen, not do you want it to happen, if it was to happen, you would at some point in the future end up with more of what you got, therefore the voice that whispers what happens if the shoe drops can fuck off because regardless of whether you need it or want it more, the fear is kind of pointless.

So the frame of there is nothing to fear from that. Yeah. I'll add one other part to the reframing. The other reframing is that it's like when you start to see it out of the corner of your eye, you're like, oh, cool, let's go instead of, okay, what the fuck? When you feel that intensity and that embrace, it's like, oh, I'm turning right towards it. And when you do that, it's less likely to build into like the shit show that we experienced as youngers because you lean in immediately, so you don't wait until your whole identity has to collapse.

You're like, oh, that little piece of my identity isn't working. Well, I remember coming out of groundbreak as I told you about this experience. I don't know if I've talked about this before, but after seven days of 12 hours a day on a fucking flower farm in Northern California, being scrutinized by you, heavily scrutinized by Joe and his team of wonderful facilitators, when I came back into the real world, one of the first things that I texted you about was every time that I tell a lie, no matter how small it feels like nails on a chalkboard, there was this unbelievable attunement to incongruence.

And that I've noticed, I had David Dader on the show a little while ago, where the superior man guy, and if you actually look at David's CV, he started off in computer science doing AI in the 80s, then became an expert in math stuff, then went and did like tantric sex work for like a decade, then came out and did the masculinity stuff, then went back into computer science, then came out and did some more stuff. Now he lives in the woods in Florida doing whatever the fuck.

And I asked him this question, I was like, how, draw the thread together for me across the journey of your life, this arc, it doesn't seem like an arc, it looks like a spider with a pen attached to it that's been given too much cocaine and it's like, run around this piece of paper. He said, the pain of being out of alignment with myself is so great that I can't bear it. And that was the same thing. Like the pain of being out of alignment with what is true for me, with what I want to do, with what I know.

And it's not just what you want, but his level of knowing, because just following what you want without a good level of self-awareness actually can result in you being in fucking rock bottom living in your car, right? Like, I want to fuck that girl, or I want to drive that motorcycle, or I want to have the car with the crazy racing stripes on it. But yeah, and that feels like resonant to me, that nails on a chalkboard, that at some point you just get, you kind of fall into alignment and you become increasingly more attuned and attenuated to the times when you're not.

That seems like kind of important. I think that one of the big questions that people have to, like kind of drawing things back to the initial image that we were looking at of like, you know, is it fuck the game? Is it win the game? Whatever it is. I think one of the questions that people, what we're really talking about, if we can summarize it, the question that people need to ask themselves is what am I going to do with the pain that exists inside of me?

What am I going to do with that? And I think that for men, like one of the things that I've seen time and time again is that oftentimes men are taught that strength equals suppression, that suppression equals strength. And that's whatever it is that I'm feeling, whatever that makes me be perceived as weak, that that is going to make me be perceived as stronger. And that is a recipe for, there's a whole bunch of shit that's inside of me that I don't know how to deal with, that I don't feel capable or competent of dealing with, that I don't want other people to see.

And that becomes this sort of chaos inside of them that they don't know how to reconcile with. And so I do think that regardless of whether you're trying to win the game or fuck the game or whatever it is, at some point there is a reckoning with the negative self-perception, the negative self-treatment, the pain, the suffering that exists inside of you. And I think that in some ways we all have different tacks, although they seem to be very similar, on how to go about doing that.

But I think that in part is the starting point of needing to get to that place of saying, okay, what am I going to do with this? Do you agree? Yeah, I was thinking that I can answer your question of what karma is now that he's teed it up. Cool. So, I completely agree. You have been edging us for the last 20 minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ah, sentiment! Edge! Edge all the way to the edge! Edge is where we'll continue to exist. We've been surging for so long now.

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That's join.whoop.com slash modernwisdom. So I love this. I love your framing, Connor, because it's like, what are you gonna do with the pain inside you? Like, it's there. It ain't going anywhere. You can't get rid of it. And so you said there's a reckoning. And I think that's what karma is. Karma is the reckoning. So karma is nothing more than the principle of cause and effect, right? So I think Newton's third law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This is a principle of physics.

It's like cause and effect is part of the fabric of the universe. And what gets confusing about karma is that it like, I think people are very imprecise with their understanding of it. They think it means like justice, but karma is not human. It's not morality. It's not justice. It's just cause and effect. If a ball goes up in the air, a ball comes back down. So when I was in maybe my third year of wannabe monk training, I met someone who was pretty spiritually developed.

And I was like, well, what do you think about like karma? And he said, well, I can't stand behind any philosophy that says if a woman is a, it's her fault. And so I think this speaks to the ignorance around karma that like, it's like that karma is gonna get your, like if I steal from you, like something bad is gonna happen to me. I think we live in a world where the karma of stealing from people is to become a billionaire. Like that's the karmic price that you pay when you embezzle a country's funds, let's say, right?

And so karma is nothing more than cause and effect. And my exploration of karma tried to, I tried to ask myself one question if you wanna understand, I mean, I don't know if this will help you understand karma, it's how I understand it. When does cause and effect end? So if I have a patient who has depression, let's say, so we know that there's like genetics that cause a predilection, changes their serotonin transporter structure in some way that predisposes them to something. So that's like a cause, this is a cause that predisposes them to depression.

We also know that there are environmental factors like experiences like trauma or adverse childhood experiences. Those are also causes that have effects. And the really interesting thing is the further back you go, I wasn't able to find a convincing way. I don't know, I'm gonna struggle to put this. So there are all the effects that you have in your current life that were pretty measurable. But what about all the things about your life that are random? The time that this consciousness embodied this set of neurons, who your parents are?

Because does that suddenly become random at some point? And that doesn't make any sense to me. Like, I think it's just, it's cause and effect all the way back. Like cause and like, and we sort of know this and this is why it gets kind of confusing. Like, duh, like you're your kid because you had your parents. Well, that's a cause. And then that has a cause and that has a cause. And if you were sort of think about it, the closer I got to the border of what is random, I couldn't find any answer.

That like nothing is random. You can make an argument that things like Brownian motion are random or like quarks are random or whatever. There seems to be some randomness in the universe. But it also seems like despite really sub atomic levels, there's randomness, but somehow order emerges, right? So we don't know exactly what's going on there. And so the way that I think about karma, because then people also get into questions of destiny and free will and stuff like that. The way that I really simply understand it is it's your choice whether you jump off the cliff, but it's destiny whether you fall after you make your decision, right?

So like, and this is where I think what a lot of people don't realize and what I loved about your answer, Connor, is like, you have a lot of pain inside you. How are you going to deal with that? That is your karma. All of us made choices, right? And this is where maybe we're getting to agency. Like we made choices. You decided to glue spikes onto your helmet. The alarm at 7 a.m., I did the stupid thing where I was like, if I have an 8 a.m.

class, I'll wake up, right? I thought I could force myself, but I had the 7 a.m. alarm, the beginning of my Spanish final, and I was like, okay, I gotta go get, and I chose to turn it off and go back to sleep. We make choices and we have to live with the consequences of our choices. And I think the biggest mistake that I see so many men make is that they try to get away from the choices that they make. They lean away from the, you see it in the corner of your eye, you turn away from it, and Joe will tell you, I'm sure he can tell you 1,000 stories of how that's just gonna make things worse.

You have pain inside you, you're trying to run away from it, ain't gonna work. There is a reckoning. And when I've learned this in my life, and this has been like brutal, like we talk about rock bottom, I feel like I'm still at rock bottom in many ways. And that's why when you're like, would you want it again? I'm like, no, can I finally, finally, can I get rid of it? Can I be done? Can I rest? And the answer is like, no, not yet. And so karma is like, you can't run away from the things that you do.

And even running away, people think that, okay, I can deal with it tomorrow. No, you can't. What people don't understand is, your brain is plastic 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which means it is constantly wiring. If you do not do that task today, you will train yourself to not do tasks. There is no such thing as waiting until tomorrow. We assume that the organism that we are, that you will be the same fundamental organism, just better rested, right? Slightly more motivated. I've listened to modern wisdom.

And so tomorrow, it'll do the work for me, which is the other thing that I think we're all getting to. Nothing, no amount of meditation, no amount of spending time in the Himalayas, no amount of whatever the fuck you are doing, right? Chopping wood, shadow work, yeah, Bernard. Bernard can get you halfway there, right? All this stuff can get you halfway there, but nothing is a substitute for that karmic reckoning and that moment of like, you have to take control at some point. Can we get somewhat methodological?

Yeah, I think there's one thing I wanna touch on before we do that, but I think it'll be part of it. If we go back to that mountain thing, I think there's also a developmental issue in the mountain. When you're going up the mountain, you're learning agency. I think that's a really important thing to learn before you get to surrender. I sent you Charlie Hupert's conception of this that he gave me, and it fucking broke me in half. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you go from victim to actor, and then he goes from actor to emotion, and then from emotion to spirit.

That's his, and he talks about it going down, but yeah, it's very simple. I just think that there's natural things that we need to learn. When I'm hearing you talk about we've made choices, and this is the thing, and you have to take responsibility for yourself, that is, you said two things. You said that, and you also said something about you're constantly having to let go of things that you've learned as growth. My words for that is every epiphany is a rut waiting to happen, and it's like the epiphany of I have agency, this is my responsibility, it's on me, is an incredibly important epiphany, but it can become a rut if it doesn't turn into, eventually, it's all grace, it's all surrender, like all of this is blessing.

I had no idea, I chose none of it, and so it's an interesting thing. It's that the thought processes that we have, it's not a question of they're right or wrong, because you asked me, you're like, did you agree with that? And my brain doesn't even work like that. I'm like, what is it that, how is that what he's saying truthful is how I think about it? Like, oh, let me understand the truth of that, because there is no right idea or wrong idea, there is just, is this idea helpful?

Does it create freedom for me today? Because it might be enslavement tomorrow, and so I'm constantly seeing the world that way, and I think that that mountain is the same thing, that there's certain things when you're climbing up the mountain that give you freedom. Yeah, doing the thing. Doing the thing. And then letting go of the thing on the other side. This is something that I found incredibly difficult and painful and is one of the reasons I like to talk about the Lonely Chapter, that if, and arriving is kind of part of this too, realizing that the tools that you relied on that pulled you out of the last quagmire and now the things that you have to pull yourself out of again, hang on, you're telling me this thing, and there's a lot of value that's wrapped up in it, almost like a morality of this thing, this thing is good, was good to me, and now you're telling me that my fellow escapee has become my captor.

Fuck. Yeah. Yeah. Precisely, actually, I think it's more precise is, and now that is only a tool that's good about 5% of the time. Yeah. It's significantly less useful. So I can't let go of it all the way either. Yes, yes, yes. I can't let go of it all the way either. Yes, I've got to feather the throttle, but now I need to grow a third leg and actually be able to put another throttle on at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think there's an attitude here that, speaking of methodology, which I think we should pivot to, people have this idea of wanting to be done, and I hate that we live in a society that propagates this idea, like passive income, retirement, right?

People will sometimes ask me, because we talk about rock bottom, and they're like, I remember I felt very envious and intimidated and ashamed because someone that I went to high school with became a doctor while I was, finished medical school while I was still applying. So I started med school at 28, and so they were done by then. And so we met for Christmas. I hadn't seen her in 10 years, and I was like, oh, what are you up to? And she's like, yeah, I'm finishing.

I'm done with medical school. I'm moving on to residency. I'm like, what are you up to? And I was like, I'm applying. And so I think people feel exhausted, and so they hope for this day when the work is done. Dirty fuel. Dirty fuel. And so there's a sort of like, okay, when can I be done? When can I, what do I need to do? Like, what amount of passive income? What amount of this? Like, when can I, when can I- What amount of meditation? What amount of self-care?

Yeah, so how do I do all the right things so that I can be at peace forever, and then I have to stop working to be at peace, right? How do I attain enlightenment, which is, I love Joe's quote, porn for perfectionists. Also a thing that I, on the surface, disagree with, but I'm sure we don't. But so, and so I think part of this idea of it becomes part of your tool belt is like the work, and this sounds so exhausting, but it's only, the work is never done.

That's what I, that's why also I'm kind of like, yeah, I'm actually okay with not having more fear or whatever, because like, to me, it really feels, and this was, this has been a brutal realization for me and my wife, which we're actually like okay with. It was like, so many people in my family, so if you're a doctor, like people call you, right? And so we're just always putting out fires. Hello, son, I have earache. Yeah, right? And so erectile dysfunction, what do I do?

Or sometimes I get calls, right? Because I have to podcast like yours, and then people will ask me the only way I can achieve a climax is through anal sex. What do I do, right? And getting that call from a 65-year-old person in your family is really weird. Have anal sex? Isn't that an easy solution? Well. It seems like a simple sum to square. I'm confused. So here's, here's, here's. This is not gonna be what people expected at all. Here's the challenge. So I understand. My logical brain kicked in, I apologize.

No, I mean, I understand why it's confusing for you, Joe, because I'm sure that that's something that's available to you at all times given how manly and charming you are. But for some of us fuckers who weren't singers and riding motorcycles, that's just not an option all the time. I was assuming it was your aunt, not your uncle. Oh, okay. Sorry. We're good. So, yeah, we can, I mean, I think we should do round two where we don't have to stay on track. Like, what fun is that?

We can just keep going. I do think it would be interesting for us to talk about sex, like in a, not now, but like later. Yeah, that'd be fun. So, I don't even remember, what was I talking about? When you were a doctor, people called up. Yeah, so I think this idea of the work being done, and I think changing your relationship to that, right? Changing your relationship to, and this is why like life has smacked me in the face like over and over and over again.

I've tried to be done, I'm not done. It's like life is not gonna let me be done, like, no. I think I said to a client last week, who told you that you get to be done learning how to be a human? Yeah. Like, where is that? Like, in the manual, did you get a manual that said that? Because I think, we continue to go through these different stages, and I do think that it's the trick of the ego or the personality, the identity, it's always looking for some finality of let me get to this place, and then it'll be completely okay, and then I won't have to continue to go.

I won't have to deal with this anymore. I think that's the ego. Like, that particular thing is, it's the ego's way of reinstating itself. Totally. And the other thing about it is, I think about the same thing, but I think about it slightly differently. It's like, when does an oak tree stop evolving? When is it done? When is like any life form done? Life in general done? The planet done? Like, there's just like, there's no done. I don't even get that concept, but I remember striving like hell for a decade to be done.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think in- some ways, not to be like esoteric about anything, but I think in some ways, I think, I think in some ways, like this is part of what is happening in culture and society is that we have. Olders and not elders. We have a whole bunch of people that at some point in their life, they're like, I'm good. Mom, just, I'm not going to continue to mature at all, I'm not interested in that game because it's really fucking hard.

Yeah. And it is really fucking hard. And I think that that's something that has, because the therapeutic industrial complex and psychology has been commodified. It's very easy to sell people on quick fixes and you know, end points and outcomes. And we forget to teach them that part of this really is about maturation and that maturation isn't about you. It's not about you. It's about you being able to be of service in a greater, deeper way to other people, to community, to world, et cetera. But that, I think that's really gotten lost in the sauce of, you know, online.

It's up the mountain stuff. Yeah. It's like, Oh, you're going to be better. You're going to be fixed. You're going to be, and that's super alluring. And so I think, I think sometimes we need that though, to like hook people in and be like, okay, come on in. Like you're going to. So, so I mean, I think, you know, you asked your client, did you get a manual? I think the problem is exactly what you've said is that actually most people do get manuals. Like you go, I'm going to sell you one for 99.99 on the internet.

Like, right. So everyone is selling you. Well, the most dangerous manual of all is the one you don't realize is a manual. It's the values that you just imbibed that you, that you through osmosis took in as you were growing up, and then this becomes this weird kind of source code that you have to go in and unpick. I think, fuck, I didn't even choose to learn this. I didn't even know I was learning it. At least if it's a $99 thing on the internet, there was some volition.

You know, I had to put your credit card in or watch the Jordan Peterson video or whatever. Like the stuff that you have. And I think this is why we talked about this yesterday, modern therapy culture and the concern that some people have that the abundance in use of therapy is causing people to cut their parents off is, well, that's me unpicking part of a relatively nuclear hammer to unpick a lot of the source code that was inside of me. Yeah. And I think kind of like you said about outcomes, you know, like we are becoming a society that's outcome oriented.

It's like valuations. What's the stock market? What's the KPI? Even with therapy and the programs that we developed, they're really successful and they're focused on outcomes, right? Cause that's how you measure. That's how you make predictions. It's also how you motivate. Yes. Yeah. So, and this is, this is one of the things that having three people that have done a total lifetime self-work of like more than some people that are listening to this, like you guys between me will have meditated for more time than some people listening to this have been alive, like, which is, I don't know, maybe close.

No one's in the car. Um, so one of the problems that you end up with there is like trying to shortcut through the mountain or tell people that the mountain doesn't exist. And it's like, yeah, I know, but the world has never shown me that I'm even worth anything. And part of me just wants some motherfucking proof. Right? Like I just want some proof that I can like do things. That's where climbing the mountain is really important. Yeah. Can we, can we break this down into like two pieces that I think might be helpful for the listener?

One is I think everybody needs to develop a sense of self-worth, which is relational based. It's attachment based. And in my opinion, and then second, people need to develop self-esteem. They need to have some level of confidence, competence, capability, and those two modalities are very different modalities to build and develop. And oftentimes what's happening for a lot of people is that they're lacking in a sense of worth and value and how they're trying to acquire that or develop it is through stacking up competencies and proficiencies and being very capable.

And it doesn't, it doesn't actually help them fill the gap of, I have inherent worth. I actually matter. Because you're constantly going to have to perform. If people only love me for what I do, correct. That means that no one loves me for who I am. And also if I stopped doing what I do, the love that I do have, because it's contingent on me doing the thing, yes, requires me to continue to do the thing. And if I stopped doing the thing, the love would go away.

Yeah. And so you better keep podcasting. So you better keep podcasting. I have 1200 episodes in, what the fuck do you think I'm doing? Yeah. I mean, I totally agree. So I mean, this is something I realized recently, I've been working with people for a while and solving your problems doesn't solve your problems, you know? So like if you have low self-esteem and this is what we see with imposter syndrome. So what's really interesting is imposter syndrome. I went to Tufts for medical school and Harvard for residency.

And the rate of imposter syndrome at Harvard is astronomically higher, right? So when you have this self-esteem problem and you start racking up substitutes for self-esteem, I think is a good word to start, but I think we're going to get methodologically deeper than that, you know, it just, it just doesn't work. And there is, there is a, there is a role and this is what I've seen. Each thing has its place. And the moment that you start substituting one thing for another thing, so competence, success in the world, I'm not anti these things.

I don't think any of us is anti these things, right? Climbing to the top of the mountain has a lot of value because once you're at the top of the mountain, you've got a good view, but don't the top of the mountain is not a substitute for the bottom of the mountain. And so by all means, strive, achieve their methodologies to do that. But I completely agree with what Conor is saying that like, that is not a substitute, which I think is the theme that's kind of floating to the surface is like, you can't dodge the work.

And right. A lot of the time, the work that you think is the work is not the work that you think is the work is a substitute for what the actual work is. Like if I just do the grit and spit and sawdust thing, I had this line that, um, people seem to like where I kind of called out, uh, endurance athletes, um, people are prepared to deal with discomfort as long as they get to choose the flavor of their discomfort. That I can do hard things is very easy in some ways to the ultra runner who will go and train and do a 50 K warmup for the race they've got next weekend, but won't go home and have a difficult conversation with their spouse.

Okay. Uh-huh. That's interesting. I do hard things, but only in this domain over here, not in this one that's right in front of me. So the work is not always the work. I mean, I, I was thinking about what Joe said and, uh, you know, um, that one of the most dangerous things I think that you're kind of alluding to is like, we stop allowing ourselves to want things that we can't have. Right. So, so if, if I'm afraid that I can't achieve something, I will trick myself into not wanting it, which I think methodologically is, and I'd love to hear your expansion on that, but I think it's methodologically is the, is the mechanism by which people fall into your problem.

I don't, I can't get my parents to love me. And instead of facing that full on, so what I'm going to do is try to make them proud. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent, but I think that's, I would say the, the, the place I would expand there is that's because wanting is one of the most difficult emotions to that people, to that, that people, they resist that emotion. They resist feeling that emotion to actually sit down to want to actually sit down like right now and say, I'm just going to allow myself to like deeply want, I don't even care if it's anything like want nothing, but just have that feeling of wanting.

Most people find that incredibly uncomfortable. That's really interesting. Cause much of the concerns about malaise for modern people is in desire, right? Desiring, desiring the wrong thing, taking what society tells me that I want at the very beginning of this conversation. It's like, what do I want? Yeah. So let's take this nicotine for instance, like if I pull this nicotine out of here, I'm like, cool, if I want that thing and then I just put it in my mouth, I'm done with the feeling of wanting, keep that right there.

Look at it the entire time, want it the entire time that's feeling wanting. So I'm not suggesting that the problem isn't like just grabbing the thing that you want right away. It's actually the feeling of wanting is something that most people do not want to sit with. Why? Because it's a, one of the few things, one of the few emotional experiences where you have to acknowledge that you are not in control. You're not in control of your wanting. You're not in control of your need. You're not in control.

Uh, gratitude is another place where you're not in control. You have to acknowledge something greater than yourself and people, they'd like destroys the entire identity aspect of it's me. I've got to do it. Why did I fuck up? You had this great word for it. You, you talked about thinking about yourself is kind of at the base of all the, all the, in our interview, in our conversation, you thought thinking about yourself and constantly having self-referential thoughts, creates depression and a whole lot like narcissism. Self-referencing.

A default mode network activation. Exactly. And, and something like allowing yourself to feel wanting actually starts deteriorating your identity and that's why people don't want to do it. What desires inside of ourselves should we trust? Say it again. What desires, what wants should we trust? I'm not saying trust or distrust. I say feel. Right. Okay. The feel the thing. It's not about taking action or not taking action. Are you willing to completely feel the thing? And if you take a want, any want, and you say, okay, what's the need behind that want?

So you start off, I want, uh, I want porn, right? Okay. What's the need behind that one? Oh, I want to feel calm. Okay. What's the need behind that one? Oh, underneath calmness. I want to feel like I actually have like some sort of connection. Okay. What's the need behind the connection? What you'll notice is all that those superficial wants are all just strategies to get to some of your basic core wants. But, but because we don't want to feel that core want that pain, we just move to the thing that's on top.

Okay. I'll take the porn. Can I expand? Yeah, please. Okay. So I, I hope this is closer to methodology. So my answer is slightly different, but I'm pretty sure we all agree on everything. So the reason I think want is hard to sit with is because it's actually the, it's the foundation of all suffering. So if you think about what is peace, what is contentment, contentment is the absence of want. So I'm hungry. That is a disturbance of my peace. I want food. Want is the biology, biological source of survival.

Right? So if you look at any living organism of evolution to evolution, yeah, yeah, yeah. So by biology, evolution, right? So, and this is the problem with being human. And this is the problem with being a living organism is like even an amoeba that encounters some toxic pH will want to move away from it. So I, I think even if you look at fear, what is fear, fear is a want for safety. What is anger? Anger is a want for territory, a wanting of safety, what is lust?

It's wanting, you know, pretty good, right? And even if you look at like, okay, can I tunnel through, this is a want for the avoidance of hard work. So this is something that I think the Buddha taught, and this is something that's really fascinating. I don't know if you guys noticed this, but no one teaches the Buddha's teachings. Have you guys noticed this? Yeah. Like there's a Bible, which is like what Jesus taught. And then there's a Christian, there's the Bhagavad Gita, which is what Krishna taught.

There's the Quran, which is what Muhammad taught. Where's, where's Buddha's book? It's the Pali Canon. So we have a bunch of Buddhist teachers who are teaching some permutation of the Buddha. Do you guys know why that is? It's because if the Buddha's teachings were taught today, he'd get tarred, feathered, and crucified. His teachings are so contrary, and they are the methodology, right? So Buddha says something really interesting, which is, if you have pain, your reaction to the pain is what suffering is. You can't control that there's going to be pain in life, like bad shit is going to happen.

It's the way that you react to it, right? So Joe, when faced with the car, holds his pitchfork. It's your reaction to it. That's really all you control in life is the way that you react to things, which then gets a problem in agency. And I've worked with lots of addicts who can't control their reactions. And then, but he says something. So that is like something that in the commoditization of therapy, we love to tell patients like, ah, you have pain. She has dumped you. You cannot control it, but don't, don't feel bad, bro, right?

Let's talk about your feelings. It's okay. What we don't tell people is the Buddha says there's an even more insidious thing, which is that pleasure, which is the opposite of pain is not something that you can control in life. When you wake up, when you walk outside after love Island, you have no control overseeing the Milky way in that, that. Evocation of positive feeling. So pleasure, you can't control in life. And when you attach yourself to pleasure, which is often used as an antidote to pain, it creates obsession.

So pain leads to suffering. If you don't react to it correctly, pleasure leads to obsession. If you don't react to it correctly, if you hold on to pleasure, if you strive for wanting, if you want to satisfy your wants, that's going to be where you lose control of your life. And I think you're spot on. And it's so interesting because I had a, I had a meditation teacher who told me like, here's how you conquer desire. And he said, so he said, I used to be addicted to potato chips.

And so he said, like, you know, what would happen is I'm like, I'm yoga, yogi, Rishikesh, Haridwar, Himalayas. Right. So I'm going to do sadhana, proper spiritual practice, not this white people thing. Okay. So then he's like, I really like potato chips and like, this is something I must conquer to become enlightened. Just one step away. It's just one fucking potato chip. Once I stopped the potato chip eating, then I'll be done. Exactly. Then I'll be done. Exactly. Right. So his teacher tells, so then what would happen is he'd like, resist and you'd resist and resist.

And then one day, cause this is in India, this is many years ago, but in India, like you can't get potato chips at a store, they fry them fresh on the street. So you have like potato chip vendors, which is like delicious. You're walking past, you're walking past like fresh made potato chips. They're gonna be stale in an hour, but man when they come out and they sprinkle that masala on top It's like it's straight fire so one day the guy like goes into town and then some guys like frying some potato chips and then he cracks and Then he hates it.

And so his teacher tells him so then he goes and he confesses and he's like I have a problem He's like, what's your problem? It's like potato chips. She's like, okay, this is what you need to do I need to beat myself up over something. So I was thinking potato chips. Yeah And So his teacher tells him stop resisting the potato chips and he says When next time you go to store like get a bag, you know If they get stale go get another bag like whatever stop resisting the potato chips But all you should do is anytime you want to potato chip just be aware of it and you can gratify it or not gratify I don't really care about that.

Just notice what happens within you When you want the potato chip notice what happens what is the nature of satisfaction that you receive from a potato chip, hmm And so this is the most fundamental exercise, which I think is like what's really scary and what's really Contrary is the methodology is not I mean sometimes it's action Sometimes you got to get to the top of the mountain but sometimes the methodology is awareness and what frightens me what frustrates me what makes me feel obsolete is That I think awareness like does away with my whole fucking profession, that's true All of you guys would be out of a job if everyone was sufficiently aware.

Yeah Yes, and I wouldn't even I wouldn't say like awareness if you posit it that way There's some level of awareness that you could have if everybody trusted their awareness We'd be out of a profession. Hmm. I don't think it's like some level of awareness. It's just trusting their awareness Yeah, it's so interesting how levels and experience and getting there squeezes into the conversation Yeah baked in this when I get to point or what's sufficient. Yes, the saturation does yes The efficacious dose of awareness in order for me to have achieved this thing Yeah, and it's it's it's so scary like how powerful awareness is.

Oh my god okay, so just to on back to like actual things you can do and Geeking out for a second. I love the awareness one. I have found that that works with pretty good efficacy The other one I love is I love this one particularly for porn addiction Use porn anytime you want be aware of the porn, but your job is to make sure that the porn that you use is Always more enjoyable than the last time you use porn You have to figure out a way to make porn super enjoyable Like like whatever you have to do like candles whatever you got to do to like make porn more and more enjoyable I didn't mean like quick pleasure.

I mean like you're really savoring feeling the pleasure You can do the same thing with potato chips if someone actually does that it like disrupts bad habits unbelievably quickly on the surface what that sounds like is you speed running the hedonic treadmill and That oh, well, this is going to make the the habit even more alluring even more addictive even even more Self-reinforcing. Why is that not the case? Why does it do something else? Yeah, so most of the time the person who's doing it is trying to escape an emotional experience so I'm gonna Use porn so I don't have to think about something not have to be in pain not have to so I can cure my anxiety In that moment in that second This is bringing such a deep amount of presence to it to actually enjoy it you actually have to have presence and then you start to find out is that the Enjoyment is far better than what porn was giving you There's a neuroscience version, please so So when he says enjoy porn notice what he also says don't tug one out, bro.

Yeah, right So this is this is what I think is really interesting. A lot of people don't realize Pleasure and contentment are inversely related Okay, so the more pleasure you have in your life the less content you'll be and this is down to the neuroscience level So dopamine and serotonin are like this is rough. But if you guys want to get complicated we can Dopamine and serotonin are like inversely related So if you look at someone who has a highly dopaminergic life like the person I wanted to be Right, so a lot of sex a lot of affairs pointing at you not me.

I'm just saying Teachings to I have practical teachings to So So literally like if you if you live a dopaminergic lifestyle You will be your serotonin levels will drop and so you'll become discontent and then you chase dopamine So dopamine is a substitute for serotonin. And then what we find is that as people become more content Their draw for dopamine decreases on average. Would you say that more people have a dopamine problem than a serotonin problem? Using that they're chasing after that whereas if they were in more in I always think about dopamine Chris serotonin Chris and cortisol Chris like dopamine Chris is achieving things and making new 24-hour play records on the channel serotonin Chris is Relaxing in a hammock and cortisol Chris is arguing about something over email What's the word?

Oh Chris Chris himself Chris. Oh, okay. I was like, oh I I was gonna say oxytocin Chris Scared that it's gonna go anal sex That's all three I'm sorry Serotonin problem more people in dopamine. So so I'd say that you can't have one problem without the other Right. So the whole point is that they're related So if you have a dopaminergic that's a problem if you live a dopaminergic lifestyle your serotonin by definition is going to be low And if you look at these yogis in the Himalayas, they're I mean wait, no one's doing In Trust not even true cellular Intercellular measurements of dopamine and serotonin between neurons like no one's like doing brain biopsies to measure that stuff So this is basically functional neuroscience but if you look at like a Yogi a yogi is content and so they can still engage in pleasure But that contentment is also enters the endocannabinoids circuitry But if you think about your piece, right if I am fundamentally content And I think this is what I'd love to get to the methodology of that bifurcation that you were talking about because I think this is what Connors talking about is like if you are Confident in yourself if you're relationally connected the fuel that dopamine The problems that dopamine solves actually disappear and I think that's what he's talking about as well Which is like if you don't tug one out, which by the way is the hard part if you're addicted Yeah, especially if you're watching porn with candles on right?

There comes a time where I just get outgunned So so and so I I think One day I'll be strong enough One day so so well we get you know, we get to this point where like what I what I really like about that exercise It's a shift to serotonin. It's a shift This is exactly the the the potato chip exercise when you start to settle in awareness when you become aware of something the bite of it like literally decreases and there's some fascinating neuroscience about this where like I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but you know if I You know the difference between people who dance and people who don't know how to dance Confidence one set is traumatized Hmm So, so I think one one group tries to do it and one group doesn't try to do it Does that make sense?

Yeah, I get what you're saying, right? So something really interesting happens So if I if I were to like give you guys like something to eat and I tell you consciously control every movement You would not be able to chew If I tell you consciously, okay contract the calf now lift now extend the foot now put it down So anytime you become aware of something something really interesting happens It's the anterior cingulate cortex once that turns on and you become aware of something the automaticity of the brain turns off Right, so I I think this this serotonergic circuit is really I mean it's it's fascinating But like the more aware you become things just lose their power like the power that emotions have over you If you really lean into the emotion and you feel that emotion that reckoning of pain Right, like when when you actually face that reckoning when you face the music The strength that it has to control you actually goes away That's cool.

You create a pattern interrupt, right? Like when you think about the porn example Somebody's feeling something they're anxious. They're angry. They're bored. They're lonely. They don't want to feel that way Their brain has created a uh, because our brains are largely pattern recognition machines And they're looking for patterns to largely keep us safe and so for a lot of guys They're watching porn They're re-watching porn because they feel a certain way that they don't want to feel And their brain has learned. Oh and I feel this when this emotion pops up in my body.

I go jerk off and That cycle plays out and they have a very specific cycle There's a cycle of how they do it and when they do it and and how they're feeling before there's like there's a whole Yeah, there's a whole cycle that plays out and then they always feel a specific way after which is usually shame regret You know, it's like what's the post not regret right? It's like what the fuck was I just watching? and so what joe's talking about is creating a Different type of confrontation or a type of confrontation that creates a different pattern That starts to slow things down and accentuate From a place of like, okay.

What am I actually feeling? What i've given to guys is set a timer go sit down go breathe and feel into what you're feeling And I called it the fire meditation and it's like okay You're feeling something in that moment that you're running from yeah, and you don't want to feel it You're feeling anger. You're feeling loneliness. You're feeling whatever it is and you are avoiding it And so let's move towards it right young talked about Uh, carl young talked about like when you are facing a monster in a dream The worst thing you can do is run from it And but this is what we do When we have habits or behaviors or choices that we largely don't want to deal with or emotions that we don't want to deal With we run from them.

And so what What I'll often do with men is let's turn towards it So he says when there's a monster in a dream The first thing that you need to do is you need to turn towards it and you need to turn towards the thing that you're Afraid of you don't want to feel you don't want to experience because Not always but sometimes it'll start to dissipate you can start to build a relationship with it And instead of oh, I feel this way. I don't want to feel this way It's oh I feel this way and i'm starting to build tolerance for it.

I'm actually still okay even though i'm feeling this way and that that Oftentimes is a byproduct of a family system a nervous system within a family system where somebody just didn't learn How to deal with hard emotions, right? They didn't learn how to deal with anger or anxiousness or whatever it is and so they're they've Adopted all of these methods to deal with internal states that they don't like like a lot of Dysfunction that people are experiencing is i'm experiencing an internal state that I don't like and I have all of these ways Of avoiding what's happening inside of me?

And so I think part of what we're talking about is how do we support people in turning towards the internal state? That they're ultimately trying to avoid and one of the things that I say to guys all the time is like there's no change without some form of confrontation There's no change without some form of confrontation And and it's like but that's and I think from a masculine perspective That is something that we're really missing like a lot of young men are they have been neutered When it comes to confrontation, they've been told that confrontation is toxic.

They've been told that confrontation Is bad they're wrong for it And so they're really these fragile not just men and I was the same way, right? Like I you know, I was okay with getting into bar fights. That was totally okay That type of confrontation was fine, but I wasn't okay with the confrontation of like wow I feel really fucking sad or I feel really weak or i'm really scared about this thing That type of confrontation was never taught to me And I think that that's the case for so many people where they're not taught how to confront the hard negative Perceived and negative experiences that are going on inside of them.

Surely it becomes very pernicious when the Coping mechanism is something that's lauded By other people so this is where it gets very squirrelly and might be interesting Maybe we could go to the methodology of the rock bottom thing but there's one more thing about that that I the other thing that's in my approach which is It's the thing about the negative self-talk, right? So as long as the thing that you're doing is bad shame Makes it so that we Get stuck in a pattern Like if I look if I say to you Hey, what are the 10 things that you've been telling yourself not to do for a decade that you're still doing?

I can tell you you have shame around them and it sounds like I should do this. Why don't I do this? I have to do this and so So the things that you sell yourself You should be doing are the things that you're guaranteed not to do because shame Is the lock that holds the chains of bad habits in place? And so to some degree what i'm doing is i'm taking the shame out of the masturbation or the porn addiction totally by and so So I it's an interesting thing what I notice is the confrontation critical like everything you said i'm like wow totally right we have a whole course on how to feel difficult emotions and and but the other thing is That helps a lot with that is How do we really question the shame?

like really, okay, so You whack off to porn you're bad for that. I get it Uh, so that makes like what percentage of american men bad are they all bad? Like what do you say to yourself? Can you say it to them? Why don't you say it to them right now? Let's let's see how much the shame holds up outside of your internal dialogue. We do an exercise at our are men's retreats where we have guys write out their specific internal dialogue, like say verbatim, how you speak to yourself and they write it out and then we pair them up with another guy and then we say, okay, talk to that man, read it off.

We have that exact exercise, we have that exact exercise. That's funny. Yeah. And so it's, it's, it's fascinating, but I think, can we talk about shame for a moment? Can I just say. Yeah, I think shame, shame, shame's a great place. Yeah. Cause if you can crack shame, you can crack everything else a lot easier. Yeah. Practically speaking. I think what's, I'll talk about it above and then kind of drill down into it. I think what's interesting is that for many men, they are trying to deploy shame because shame is, is in many ways a compliance based emotion.

It is a, uh, I'm going to try and get myself to comply. And usually that's because they've grown up in an environment where compliance was something that a parent was seeking with them and they were deploying shame to try and get that compliance. The problem is that you are always in a kind of one down situation. Um, you're always in a smaller, inferior position when shame is being deployed. And so I think for a lot of men, part of the challenge is that they, and I'll just come back out to culture.

It's become very socially acceptable to try and use shame to gain compliance online. And that has become something so rampant that I think it should not be necessarily tolerated. Like that should be confronted, I think, in our, in our culture. And it doesn't work. It doesn't work. Wow. That person is now compliant. Now that you've shamed them online, that's like maybe never been said. Exactly. But you know, there is a kind of, uh, when somebody has been shamed long enough, that becomes their identity structure. There's something defective within me, there's something wrong with me.

And then they try and deploy shame to get out of it. You know, it's like, maybe I'll just use this fuel enough to get out of this experience and it never works. Like the Chinese finger trap. Yeah. Um, and so I think that's important for people to understand is like you, you can't deploy shame or leverage shame to really get to the place that you're wanting to go. You might be able to shame your way into some achievements that I'm sure we've all seen that in clients where they leverage shame, you know, to win some award or get some achievement.

But at the end of the day, shame is not a, an internal state that you're going to be able to leverage for success for fulfillment at least. Yeah. I, the way I think about it too, is shame basically sends a message you're broken, right? Like you were bad for doing porn means you're broken. Yeah. I'm faulty. Right. I'm faulty. I'm broken. And so how am I going to make myself succeed by keep on telling myself I'm broken? Like instead of telling myself I'm whole, that I'm capable, like, you know, can you imagine an NFL football player, okay, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to get a touchdown because I'm broken because I'm fucked up.

And because I never catch the goddamn ball, like never, not going to, but somehow or another, you think that's going to work for yourself. I just hard disagree. So this is, this is interesting. I think you can use, you can use it, right? So I think, are you going to find a football player? Yeah. I think half of them are going to think that in different words, right? So I think when we look at the heights of performance, so experience that I've had with shame, like in terms of the work that I do, which, and I'm wondering actually how much of this is like different populations.

So when you were like, can you say this to somebody else about the porn that you like? Like, I don't know if you guys know what 4chan is, you guys know what 4chan is? So like people on 4chan, yeah, they can do that shit all day long. 4chan is like Reddit's Reddit. Yeah. It's like if Reddit had all of the guidelines. Everyone who's banned from Reddit goes on 4chan. It's basically just neckbeards. Yeah. Right. So it's completely. Neckbeards? Yeah. Neckbeards. Oh. Yeah. So, and like, I agree a hundred percent with, I think we're all like on the same page about what this path is.

I think that the challenging thing is like, can you, the things that you tell yourself, can you tell it to other people? There's a whole crop of people that are like, yeah, going back to the training that they got through, they've been told it. The cycle of abuse continues, right? They can absolutely, the glove that you guys are throwing down. There's a lot of people that can pick that up. I'm not saying whether they can or can't, and I'm not sure if it changes your point, but what I've noticed is when people are confronted with how they talk to themselves in the mirror of talking to somebody else that way, it has a large effect on a majority of the population.

I'm sure there's like people who are masochistic or sadists. I think that if you look at something like, so a great example of this is imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is literally like a cognitive pattern, which is when I win, it's luck. When somebody else wins, it's hard work, right? When confronted, that's a great example of confronting the dichotomy between the way that you treat yourself and the way that you treat other people. I totally get what y'all are saying. I think when it comes to shame, I think the hard thing about shame is that it is actually the most motivating emotion.

Totally. It's the lock for your habits. The challenge that I usually face with people is getting them ... See, a lot of people function under the assumption that if they don't beat themselves up, that's their primary motivational system. Correct. Yeah. When that falls apart- Who am I? How am I going to achieve? Yeah. Right? All that stuff. Everything falls apart. People get really attached to it. I mean, the number of interviews that I've done, these are- But it's not effective. Define effective. I think it's effective in achieving results, but it's not effective in being able to reap the rewards of the achievements.

There's so many people that I've worked with where they've leveraged shame and that internal compliance system to achieve results, and then they get to the top, and they're like, well, I don't actually feel any reward because of that. The distinction I would make there is that the shame can allow you to create, but it is incredibly ineffective at getting you to stop. Shaming yourself to stop porn is very ineffective. Shaming yourself to stop cigarettes, very ineffective. Shaming yourself ... What I'm saying is the behaviors you want to stop is where shame is super ineffective.

No matter ... I think that would be- Isn't there an argument to be made that starting a new behavior can be the stopping of an old one? Like, shaming myself out of ... I want to stop eating potato chips, or I want to start being fit. Right? Like, you can stop eating potato chips because you start going to the gym, and that builds this sort of spiral of better habits, but the shame can be a kickstarter. I think the shame ... I would also say long-term ...

My experience is long-term shame on a long-term workout thing, it can get you started, but I don't see people use shame on a regular basis to be able to have prolonged ... It's a dirty fuel. You burn out. There's a short term. I wonder about ... I think I'm on your side with this about shame being quite effective at achieving an outcome. It's just the outcome that you achieve is not the one that solves the problem that you were trying to escape from the shame in the first place.

Yeah. I think we're all on the same page. I think this is where we get to the methodology, because if we challenge this perspective ... Right? I think the thing you're saying, yeah, shame is not effective at stopping behaviors, which generally speaking, I think the behaviors that you cited are neuroscientifically specific to being ineffective with shame. The reason is because if you talk about addictive behaviors, the thing that makes pornography the most addictive from a neuroscience perspective is the emotional regulation component. We've just evolved that when sex enters the picture, for men especially, that everything else leaves ...

You can be an 80-year-old dude with metastatic cancer, and you can still engage in sexual intercourse. I think when we're talking about addiction specifically, shame fuels, activates the structure that we're using pornography to calm down, so 100% agree. The challenge is that I think many people, their problem is not stopping behaviors. Their problem is an inefficiency of starting. If I'm a 4chan-er, 24 years old, sitting at home, jerking off all day, don't know how to leave the house, don't know how to get a job, I should be studying, I want to do this, and I think we've all seen this, right?

I don't really interact with that population much, I do. I think we've seen shame being motivated, is a powerful motivator to get started, right? To make a million, to make 10 million, to make 100 million, and as long as the shame is there, and people are terrified ... My experience of working with shame is that people don't want to let it go because they're terrified of what is on the other side, because shame is such a powerful motivator. I've seen that a ton. Can I just maybe give a framework that I think might be helpful here?

From my experience, shame is a very personality-based ... It roots itself into the personality, and not necessarily into the core self. Like Jung talked about core self, and then shadow, and anima, and animus, and all the rest of it. But I think one of the things that I've seen is that shame becomes the kind of blinders that get put on the person's ego or identity, where they stop seeing their core self. We could use different words for that, but I think it becomes the blinders for somebody to be able to see, I have worth, I have self-worth, I have inherent value, I matter inherently.

That's what the giant threat is, right? If I let go of this shame, if I start to confront this shame, what's going to happen to my ego? Because my ego structure, my sense of personality and identity, is so fraught with shame, that's who I think I am. I think part of the first step of differentiation is to be able to ... I have this saying with my son, which is, I love you for who you are, no matter what you do. I'm separating personhood from behavior.

Very simple principle, separating personhood from behavior. Who you are, your personhood, your sense of self, is inherently good, no matter, not no matter, but no matter what you do, no matter what you accomplish, no matter what you achieve. I think that the average person who is fraught with shame, whether it's through trauma or abuse or neglect and abandonment, part of what they're experiencing is that they've never had that differentiation. Somewhere along the way, that differentiation didn't happen. Their sense of self is what is broken. They can't actually touch that or see it.

What I think is so interesting about that, and I think we're getting there, is the number of people I've worked with who are allergic to the thought that I have inherent self-worth. Totally. Yeah. They hate that. Yeah. What's the classic avatar of that kind of person? Real quick before we ... The other thing I'm noticing is all of our stories about hitting rock bottom, they're all a confrontation with shame. Absolutely. I mean, mine was. Yeah. Yeah. In some way, it's kind of like, oh, and letting go.

The confrontation, this is actually what's happening, and letting it go. We're all kind of part of all of our stories. I really did fundamentally believe I was ... My core identity was, I'm broken. Something's wrong with me. I have to root out what's wrong with me and figure that out. Yeah. Yeah. I think that we're getting to ego. I want to just touch on one piece of methodology about shame. When I encounter people like this, because it's kind of interesting, because they don't ... It's a different challenge if they don't want to let go of the shame.

Usually the way to get around that that I found is effective is actually going back to wants, because shame is the gap between what you are and what you want to be. Shame cannot exist without want. Then we get to what's beautiful is what you started with. What do you want? What do you really want? Then we get to so many people let go of their wants because they can't achieve them. They believe that they can't achieve them. Yeah. Or they don't want to feel them.

Or they don't want to actually feel it. Feel what? The want. Yeah. 100%. That's why they let go of it. That's why they drown it out, because the thought of wanting something and knowing that you can't get it is so crushing. What I tend to lean into with these people is, let's get to want. What is it that you really want? This is also where we get to failing forward. I hate that term, actually, because it implies that fail will result in forward. The real solution, you'll get success.

Just fail first. Success is there. Guaranteed. Fail. Fails. Right? We're actually playing into it with all of this stuff. It's baked so much into the current frame of our society. Where it's like, no, actually, what you need to do, and I think this is the confrontation that we're talking about, is you need to fail and that's it, bro. If you want freedom, you need to be able to fail, face that failure and be like, hey, fucked it up. That's it. Guys, I love all of you.

You fucking rule. Having three of you in the room has been like a little dream of mine for a while, and it's just wonderful to have you. Send people, we'll go around the room one final time, and direct people to the stuff that you do or whatever you think is best for them to, okay. It's just Man Talks everywhere. Man Talks on YouTube, Man Talks on Instagram. My book is called Men's Work. That's it. Artofaccomplishment.com or at the YouTube channel probably is the best place to start or the podcast.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I'd say, I mean, Healthy Gamer Gigi is the YouTube channel, but I think if people want entertaining stuff that will teach them a little bit, that's good, but if people want deeper stuff. I am really loving the membership thing that we built and it was supposed to end in six months and it's been going for, for two years. So I think it's like, depending on what you guys want, but healthy gamer, Gigi. I should say we have an, uh, a membership as well called the, the Alliance, and we've got like 1500 guys in there, so that's awesome.

Yeah. That's a good place to be. And do you do retreat and you don't do anything in person? No, no, I'm avoidant of relations. Oh, that's true. That's fine. I'm going to drag, I'm going to drag you out. I have one for you. You'll be in the woods wearing a plaid shirt, shitting shit with you at some point, crying in a flowerpot. I think, I think I, I am the most inspired to do a, a retreat or some kind of impersonal thing. Just all the questions that you have.

Yeah, I, I, I think cause I, I mean, I'm, I'm super familiar with Joe's work and, and as familiar you can be without going through it. Yeah. Um, and, and you know, learning about Connor, but like, I mean, I, I, I think I, I guess I have to now. This is the gravitational pull. Watch for the next year. We'll be back here and be like, it's relationships and we're like, no, it isn't. We're like a solitude. The spiral. Just awareness on your own. Yeah. Boys. I love you all.

You're the best. Can I just ask one, so, so, so one last question, just because I'm going to bottom me later. So like, here's my take on relationships is at some point the relationship enters you, right? It has an impact in you. And so I don't know exactly what I'm trying to ask, but like my experience has been that it is the part within you that you actually can modulate some that is like the most important. I know we're done. You said, you said something that I'm going to kind of answer it sideways, but you said something about not needing a relationship and there, I think it's both.

It's, there's something in, in you that in me, that is like, if I need the relationship, if the relationship is like something that I need them to say yes or no, or happy or sad or approve or disapprove, then that's no good. But if I can't like, if I can't like be in awe the way he is of a night sky at that moment of a relationship and how much it's affecting me, then also, so to me, it's, it's, it's finding that balance between those two things is where the, like the, the best pointer I have.

Would you say there's a difference between the Milky way and a relationship? Not if I'm relating to them in the same way. So I think we do agree. Okay. Right. So that's kind of what I mean is like, when it crosses over, there is a, there is like a uniformity at the ground level, which I don't think is, I guess, special to humans, which we, I mean, we have pets and stuff, but you know what? Yeah. I mean, it's, I am that, right? It's like you're, you're having the awareness of you are me in some capacity.

And so to have a relationship with you in a deep way is to have a deeper relationship with myself. And there's, you know, we, we have the differentiation, but also, you know, it's, it's collapsing the duality. It's realizing that that's somewhat of an illusion, right? It's like by having a relationship with you, I have a relationship with self in that moment and that that's the ultimate. Maybe not ultimate. Cause that's like puts an ascension orientation towards it, but it's like, I'm in relationship with self by being with you, by seeing you, by understanding you, by having you be a mirror of my projections and all those different pieces.

And so, you know, it's, it's hard because at some point, the further out we get, the more into spiritual principles we get and the harder it is for people to follow those, those things. You know what I want as a sequel? And I'm aware that everyone's got horrendous fucking schedules. Trying to play calendar, Tetris is not always easy. Um, we'll make time for you. I would love, I have an idea and I'm open to you guys suggesting something else. I would love to do a beginner's guide to spirituality as a next round table.

Like for the people who are like, I have this sense that there's something more, uh, and how the fuck do I step into that could be because everyone here, what's been cool or interesting, at least for me in the conversation is there's, there is a little bit of an elephant in the room and the elephant in the room is that everybody sat at this table, even me, but maybe at a lower degree than you guys has this, like, we've almost skirted around it to some degree, like, yeah, there's like karma and stuff.

And like, here's how it works. Like, you know, there's this other bit, but like, well, that's a huge rabbit hole that we can't vortex that we can't go down. And then the senses of God or presence, or, you know, the divine or awakening or detachment from da da da da. And, um, I don't know, I'm, I'm interested in, in what a conversation of stepping into that, like the beginner's guide to spirituality would be, that's, that would be like a fucking cool potential future conversation. Sex and spirituality.

Yeah. I was, I was going to say like, are we bumping sex for this? Oh, you want to do four hours on sex? I'll do four hours, four hours on sex. I mean, I think it deserves at least that much time. I think I'd be super scared. I thought this was my ability to stop Joe, Joe, lean into it, bro. Don't turn away. I think you're supposed to technically backup into it, boys. I appreciate it. All right. Yes. That was fucking awesome. Amazing. Unbelievable.

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