Consciousness, Spirituality, and Your Thoughts with Drew McDonald

Welcome to The Ambiguous Truth. I'm your host, Anthony Mistretta. Today we have the honor of speaking with a friend of mine. We met just a couple of months ago, but he's become truly one of my best friends. And you'll tell through the conversation that he is a genuine man of character. Drew really, I think, illustrates the qualities and characteristics of what it is to be a man. On top of that, he is an extremely intentional human being. There is no conversation topic too deep to go into with him, and I think he is one of the few gentlemen in my life that truly is the embodiment of love — love for himself, love for those around you, love for humanity. And I am so excited to share some of his ideas with the world. Welcome, Drew McDonald. Let's get onto the show. Welcome. Thank you so much for coming.

Dude, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. It's a little surreal.

Is this the first time you've done a podcast, this type?

Absolutely. Yeah, nothing like this ever before, nothing like this.

This is not a very high bar.

I mean, you have quite the setup here — we're talking into these microphones, cameras, I can hear myself, it's pretty wild.

Yeah, it's true. It does feel really real when you have all of the stuff, even though it's like — for those of you who don't know, this is my apartment. Very obviously an apartment, but it works well.

But it does feel real having microphones and headphones.

It's so nice, yeah.

It's really nice.

Cool. Well, can you just introduce yourself, Drew? Tell them whatever you want to say.

I'm Drew. I'm a software engineer, been writing code for about 10 years now. Grew up in Alabama, in the Bible Belt, super religious. Made my way out to Colorado about almost five years ago now.

Wow, time really flies.

Been really enjoying my time here — been really different than everything I've grown up with so far. It's quite a culture shock coming out here, but that was the point — start whatever my version of a hero's journey was, set out from your parents' home and see what's out there.

Your version of a hero's journey.

I'm certainly trying to make it be that.

It is.

Yeah, don't really know too much what else to say.

Yeah, I mean, how'd we meet — rollerblading?

That's been my huge community here in Denver. I moved here — I'd only been rollerblading like two months when I moved here. And I was here less than a week before I found myself at Denver Urban Skate Troop meetup for the first time. And it's just an instant social circle here in Denver. So I didn't really have to go through the hard process of moving to a new place and having to find your people and your tribe — I showed up and had a tribe, and I've been really grateful for that.

And it's a good vibe. It's such a good vibe. It's really nice.

Because yeah, I grew up homeschooled my whole life, so that aspect of things has always been kind of hard for me. So showing up here and just having such a loving community of people who do a thing that I found I really like to do as well.

But really cool.

The skill aspect of it, the community — and then that's branched off into all these other different subgroups, of Dust, you know, so it's been really wonderful.

Case in point, what we're doing right now.

Yeah, it's a good community and — yeah, the tree branches extend into some really fun things, which —

A couple weeks ago, one of those fun things, that was like Dust-adjacent, was a festival that was on your farm.

Yeah, yeah, we had — it was the Free Farm Festival, which was so fun. It was a two day music and arts festival, had 23 musical acts across two stages over two nights, and like art clinics and yoga, comedy. It was really cool.

Fashion show, fashion show — how could I forget the fashion show?

It was ever — so mind-blowing, I didn't know what to expect with the fashion show, but wow, everybody knocked it out of the park, all the organizers, the MC for the fashion show brought a trumpet.

Beautiful and amazing.

Yeah, I was — I was very on mushrooms for that fashion show as well, so that was definitely a highlight of the weekend for sure. That was a really good time. Could not have peaked at a better time, literally as I'm going out — Anthony, you were in the fashion show, wow, so beautiful, seeing you had hair in the space buns coming out, in like a crop top, right?

Or there's a vest. Yes, that's what it was.

Yeah, yeah, so beautiful.

I was really enjoying the whole fashion show for 20, 25 minutes or so, I'm not sure how long it was going. Most of our friends ended up going last — Jackie, our designer friend, she was kind of the headliner of the fashion show. We were like 20 minutes in and I was like, where are my friends, I'm ready to see my friends. And then y'all started coming out, it was so nice, it was so fun.

Because — was it just me and Jarek who were in the first of the two?

Yeah, the non-Jackie line.

Yeah, non-Jackie. And then everyone from Dust/Stilts there.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, her clothes are all crocheted.

Handmade crocheted, yeah, so good.

I have one of her handmade — I guess it's crochet — well, if you crochet a dreamcatcher — our dream catcher — but yeah, I have a dream catcher of hers hung up in my room, with hers in the dome.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, she came early and set them all up, and that was so beautiful.

I know, I was shilling those pretty hard while I was in the dome, everyone in there was remarking on — and if you look, they all have a price tag.

Yeah, you can take them home, they're all for sale.

Well, next I want to get some of her clothing, because that was pretty sick.

Yeah, I got one of hers — I don't know what you call it, it's like a pull-up, not pull-over, like a shawl kind of thing, while I was there — jacket type thing with no buttons.

I loved it, man. But it had sleeves, right?

Sleeves — sleeves and kind of open in the front, and I wore that thing shirtless underneath all day. It was the vibe.

It really was. Yeah, that was pretty spectacular. And the dome —

Oh, the dome. Yeah.

That — I'm curious, I don't even know what — so you need to talk about the dome.

The dome, yeah, so the dome is a geodesic dome style greenhouse that's been a few months building in my shop, from this company that produces plans called Trillium Domes — you just buy the plans and then put it together. Yeah, started with a big stack of two-by-fours and a gigantic industrial roll of polycarbonate, and spent a couple months building all the individual panels in the shop. And then once all the panels were mostly done, not all the way done, big event — the dome raising, I called it — had everyone come out. And it took a couple tries — the first dome raising, we were really trying to figure out how the structure worked together because it really wasn't clear. But we all learned a lot in that first dome raising, we got the first sort of three layers of panels up. And then unfortunately, in the two, three weeks until the next dome raising, the wind took it. So it knocked it all down. Yeah, that was a rough sight to walk out to. I'd been, every single day, just kind of walking outside on the farm and looking over at it. And one day I was headed out to Dust, actually, and I looked over there and I didn't see it — where did it go? So yeah, the wind — it was shaped like a big parachute at the time, so I really should've known better. The wind just picked it up and laid it on its back and broke five or six panels. So I had to remake those, and then schedule another dome raising, and everyone really came together as a community to build that thing, and we stood it up in one day. It was so beautiful, and it was just in time for the festival as well — it was like an awesome community space for the festival. Not so much during the day, because it's really, really hot in there, there's no windows. Wow, we did the 2am comedy hour in the dome, it was so nice, had like 30, 40 people packed in there.

Yeah, it was tight. It was so funny.

And yeah, I'm really excited for getting to use it as an actual greenhouse next year for the growing season — that'll be the greenhouse the weed is gonna grow in. So that should be a good time, but also a community space for future events — to the energy, and it's so nice — it's kind of halfway between a geodesic dome and — it's not really like a half circle, like people might be envisioning.

How would you describe the shape of it?

I mean, it's like — it's sort of shaped like an onion, where it comes to a point on the top, almost like — not the part of the onion where it grows out, the tip — if you were to slice the bottom third, so it's just like the structure of the onion going like that, it kind of looks like that.

But then you gotta slice the front off for the entry, right?

Yeah, perfect circle.

Somebody did refer to that — I refer to it as the glass onion.

Yeah, like a show or something, the glass idea — but have you not seen Glass Onion?

I think I've seen part of it, I think I turned it on once.

I'm such a big fan of like the whodunit type category, and so it's part of the Knives Out — with Daniel Craig as the investigator. So Knives Out was the first one — it's actually based off — I mean, it's like an Agatha Christie novel style whodunit, there's a couple of them. My understanding is Knives Out is not her work, but it's the same director as a lot of those, so it's a similar style.

Phenomenal, Daniel Craig, lots of —

Old mystery.

Yeah, exactly. What's her name — Ana de Armas?

Yeah, yeah, I like her.

I like her too, how can you not.

If I pronounced that correctly, I know I didn't, but whatever.

But anyway — Knives Out, or Glass Onion, the second one — there's this glass structure kind of similar to that.

So yeah, makes sense now, it kind of looks like that.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't think you're a big movie guy though.

I'm really not — there's a lot of movies I'll mention having not seen, and be like, how have you not seen that?

I get it. All right, well I think that's a good background, let's get into the meat of it. So I'm not gonna talk to you about the Denver stuff — you mentioned something about the culture shock — but I think you painted a pretty clear picture that you're the type of person who dips your hands into a lot of things. I'm curious if that was always the case when you were younger, or were you kind of just focused on the few things that you were told to focus on, and you started to figure out kind of what things you were more interested in?

That's a really good question. No, I think a lot of things had been decided for me as a child, I really didn't do a whole lot of exploration. For example, I grew up with a heart condition where the doctor said I could only play baseball, he called it a "stand-around sport," and so just by default —

It is.

Even more so, I played catcher mostly, so really just sitting in the same spot a whole lot of the time.

No shit, I had no idea.

Yeah, I played for 11 years. It was just kind of by default. I was mostly done with the heart condition.

Oh really?

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know, do you still have the condition?

In my last pediatric cardiologist visit, they could no longer hear the murmur. So they're like, you're good. And I haven't seen one since then, but it's called post-aortic stenosis — basically I have a valve in my heart that's a little misshapen, and rather than allowing blood to pass through, it kind of shoots it out, and it actually shoots it out so fast that it impacts the opposite wall, so that's kind of bulged out a little bit.

Yeah, so there was a pretty distinct sound they could hear from that for a while?

It'd go in for like a yearly echocardiogram. My parents were so, so worried about it — basically, they're like, if you're impacted in the chest too hard, your heart could stop or something, that was the big fear they'd always say. But it never ended up being a huge issue growing up. Yeah, that was one thing — my default sport was just kind of baseball. Yeah, the other things that were really chosen for me were the homeschooling — I really had no say in that. If I had a say in it, I wouldn't have been homeschooled. And in hindsight, I'm really glad that I was, but in the moment — wow, such resentment I harbored, because I just wanted to go to a real school and be around my peers. But now, in hindsight, I'm so, so grateful.

What are some of those things that you got out of homeschooling that you're grateful for, that you don't think you would have gotten otherwise?

Big picture wise, it's because I'm sitting here now, I really wouldn't want to be anywhere else in just my life in general — my whole life I'm really, really invested in everything that's going on, I'm really interested and fascinated by it, and I wouldn't have wanted to be any other way. So knowing I would have turned out a completely different person, with different interests, different social groups, probably different cognitive abilities, if I went to a public school — the public school near me was not renowned for its academic prowess. A little anecdote — the surrounding schools, I grew up kind of rural Alabama, not in the middle of nowhere but kind of rural — the surrounding schools would have a high school called Brewer High School, they would have a "Brewer Day" once a year where they would just dress up like rednecks and make fun of them — that would've been the one I went to. I had a lot of friends who went there, and when I was in it, I really wished I could just spend the day with them, because that's what I really saw school as — getting to hang out with your friends all day. Probably it's really not the case, but that's what I saw it as, and that's what I wanted. Man, I got — probably not the best education outside of like math and science. I had a really wonderful science teacher who taught like kind of collegiate style classes, where she had a lab in her backyard full of lab equipment, would host these — the waitlist to get into these classes was so long. But she would teach these phenomenally high level, really quality science classes in physics, earth science, and biology and whatnot. So I got a really good science education from her. Everything else — not so great, you know, English was just — my parents would give me workbooks, and it's like, just do the workbooks kind of thing. But yeah, really grateful for that. I went to community college — actually graduated high school when I was 15, and started community college when I was 16. And I remember my first physics class — physics 1 or whatever — I attended every single class up until the first test, and I took the first test, and I was like, oh, this is way easier than Miss Simmons's physics class. And so I only showed up for tests after that, and did great.

No shit. At 16?

At 16. I was really, really grateful for that.

Yeah. You mentioned that you've been fascinated by the direction of your life and just how it's come to be — the why, because one of the things that drew me to you was just like your innate interest and curiosity in the world, and how it works, and how you fit into it, things of that nature. And you alluded to that by saying, through your homeschooling journey — has that always been a part of you, or was there a point where that shifted?

There's a really stark point where that shifted, I'd say. After community college, I went to Auburn University, was there for a while, I really didn't know what I wanted to do but chose aerospace engineering. Got towards the end of that program and realized I hated it, I wasn't happy, and I quit — took a year off, and came back doing software engineering, which is what I do now, so I'm really grateful for that. But only after one semester of the software engineering curriculum, I found in the city of Auburn, a full-time salary software engineer job — the job I would want to have after I graduated. So I was like, well, I don't need to finish school now, because I just have the job. And so I left school again. And it was really just kind of a soul-sucking office job — had to be at my desk every day at eight, dressed in business casual, and I really didn't enjoy it. I'm not going to use the word depressed, but it was just going through the motions, just going to work, really not knowing what my future was gonna look like. And, not unhappy with where I was — I owned my first home relatively young, in the town, and that was good, and I had friends in the area, but I was still living just a couple hours from where I grew up, and I really wanted to get out of there. And it wasn't until I had my first psychedelic experience that really started to recontextualize a lot of things for me. And so after that is really when I started to get really fascinated by everything going on. The way I thought what was happening in the world, I realized was very different than what was actually happening in the world, and I became kind of obsessed with figuring out — okay, what is actually happening, what is going on here in this place, why are we all here, what are we all up to. And since then, I've just been really blessed to be in an environment where I can ask those big questions — comfortable enough where I can spend the cognitive energy, burn the calories on what is essentially nonsense in terms of survival and making it in life, but some really big questions that I really like to get to the bottom of, and that's been really fascinating. That's been fully afforded by my history — growing up homeschooled and finding myself where I am now. So yeah.

Can you answer those questions?

To the best of my ability, right now. I know the answer objectively might be no, but — I think if someone spent their entire life even going down the correct direction, you would still end up at what amounts to rounding to 0% — understanding 0% of what's going on here. But just trying to strive to approach 1% is really fun.

It's like — you're not scratching the surface, you're like, rub gently.

Yeah, I kind of feel like approaching the surface a little bit. And so, yeah, it's been a long time trying to develop my internal model of what I think is going on here, and it's really changed so much over the last decade, and really the last eight years or so, I'd say.

And I'm sure it will continue to.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I'm sure. So give it to us —

10 years from now I believe it'll be totally different, but — no, what I think is going on right now is sort of a spiritual exercise. I mean, there's really a ton of different ways of even approaching that question, but really a spiritual exercise in learning to want to love one another, I think it's a huge part of it. Learning to love one another and let go of the parts of us that separate us from one another. And, you know, my physics background — I really don't like to just wax poetic about things, I really like to have my beliefs instantiated in sort of a rigid metaphysics, with pretty rigid rules. So I've been really developing that over a few years, leaning into things like Rosicrucianism. You know, meditation's been a huge part of my life, really getting in there — Vipassana retreats, these ten day silent meditation retreats — trying to figure out what's going on.

What's Rosicrucianism?

Rosicrucianism is — it's like the Order of the Rose Cross, right? It's this old sort of esoteric occult group of initiates — Rudolf Steiner was a huge initiate in Rosicrucianism. So they believe in the influence of sort of non-human beings in the world and their effect on us. A huge aspect of Rosicrucianism is the idea of Ahrimanic versus Luciferic influences. So the Ahrimanic influence is sort of almost analogous to Satan. A lot of people think Satan and Lucifer are the same being — they're kind of different ends of the spectrum, neither are good, but Satan's more of like the three-dimensional, worldly, gnarled being people kind of associate with Satan. Whereas Lucifer is kind of the other end — a really out there kind of, think like — an Ahrimanic influence is somebody who really takes that too far, somebody who wants to establish wealth in the world and power, and just have all the sex they can, and lord over people like a dragon. And then the Luciferic impulse is somebody who's really just about ecstatic states of being, just really throwing this physical body off to the side — so a heroin addict would be a really good example of someone who's really influenced by the Luciferic impulse. So, yeah, the whole idea behind Rosicrucianism — not the whole idea, that's one of the main ideas — is that these two influences are really at play here, and that Jesus actually represented the perfect middle path between those two influences. So he kind of — you're not gonna not be influenced by those things, but the best you can hope for is going right in between them, sort of one foot in the world and one foot in heaven, and that's sort of the main idea that they espouse.

Right, so it's not so much like there's just a good and a bad.

Right — that there's these two contrasting forces that have good qualities and bad qualities, apparently. And if you go too far one direction, then you're going to soak up all the bad in that; if you go too far the other direction, you're going to get all the bad in that and not the good in the other. Exactly. Yeah, I think people, when they think of Jesus, they think there's bad over here and there's perfectly good over here, and that's Jesus — where it's like, no, there's a middle good, and then you can stray on either side.

Yeah. So I mean, look at bipartisan politics.

Yeah, don't get me started.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So do you see that there is good and evil in the world?

Absolutely.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. How does that fit with the Rosicrucian thesis?

So I think the middle way is trying not to be influenced by these things, and it is the path towards — what's the right word here — it's the right path back to source, like back to the Monad, referred to by the Stoics, which is the source of all things, of love and truth and knowledge, right? And I think good is anything that strives to reconnect us with that, with the source of love and truth that we come from, and anything evil is seeking to keep others away from that for their own benefit. So — yeah, I think influencing somebody's free will, for example — that's a huge spiritual idea, it's a really big no-no to impact somebody's free will, it's like — you really can't do that. And so these evil influences, they try to get you to buy into the world here, either to the world here, or to totally cast out the world here, because both are departures from the path back to source.

Those are the two extremes — Luciferic and what was the other one?

Ahrimanic. Ahriman — the spirit of Ahriman.

Can you give an example of how one might modulate another person's free will?

Yeah. I mean, murder for example — that's the ultimate, you are taking their free will from them, objectively. That's the — most stark example.

And you had a brief stint as a free will denier.

I did.

I'm curious to hear a little bit about — other than Sam Harris, what were the things that led you in that direction, and then what was it that changed your mind?

Yeah, so in that psychedelic experience I mentioned, in 2017 — coming out of that and realizing that the way I'd been behaving felt like it had been under my control, and then from this other point of view, I realized it was just things happening. From that point of view, what you call "yourself" is very different than what we'd call "ourselves" here. And from that point of view, ourself — what we call here — is really not in control the way we think we are. I really don't think, to this day, that people have the type of control over themselves that they think they do. And being shown that really starkly was pretty wild. I'm not gonna get too deep into that experience, but it was an experience of sort of having something else come take the reins. And I wasn't even there to watch — I was there, in retrospect I can think about that experience, but there was no Drew McDonald to be behaving.

You weren't driving.

No, no, no, it was something else. And so, yeah, I came home and I was like, what was that, what was going on. And I discovered Sam Harris, and his talk on free will really influenced me, and his book on free will — I read that a couple times, and I'd still recommend it to anyone. I think it's a better way of viewing the world, and how people behave in it, than this idea that everyone's in perfect libertarian control of themselves. But what really started to take me out of that was my first 10-day Vipassana retreat. Going into it as a sort of materialist, determinist, free-will denier — I was really going into it as like a biohacking exercise, almost like — okay, if I don't have the type of free will that I thought I had, then what I can do is make decisions irrespective of my free will, that I know are good for me, if that makes sense. It's kind of hard to talk about because it's still like me making the decision, but I was going in there like — okay, well, if I'm influenced by all these things over which I have no control, I'm gonna learn to sit down and not be influenced by anything, I'm gonna learn how to sit down and behave myself for 10 hours a day for 10 days, and really get in there, just as a form of trying to establish more of a feeling of free will. And I ended up having what was kind of a classic religious experience on day seven of that retreat, that really got me thinking about the world. I'd gone through this one huge shift of how I thought about things, and then this really started shifting it again. It was a beautiful experience that I had of feeling — being spoken to, and like — very, very scary at the time, the feeling like — am I losing my mind, what's going on. But just the feeling of such love and compassion, being bathed in white light, and these messages, and it's like — okay, I'm not sure this is all just neurons firing anymore, I think there's something else going on here. And it still took me quite a while to become okay with believing, or allowing myself the freedom to believe, non-materialism. But wow, what a gift that has been. Materialism is a great step — to really go to the logical conclusion of which, I believe, is the denial of free will. I think that is really liberating, but it's just another stepping stone down a path, I think.

Yeah. Yeah, materialism has come up on kind of my radar a lot recently, with Telepathy Tapes.

Yeah. Wow.

And I think that — seeing what's happening now, feels like a big paradigm shift, the sooner it happens, the better. But it's also hard. You mentioned your religious background, and I had a very similar experience — it was Christian school for 14 years, and then raised Catholic — you have the mass on Sundays, the Catholic school also — so I had like five days, four days a week of chapel, Bible class four days a week, that's just school, mass every week.

You were deep in it, like that.

Yeah. And so, going to college, I completely went away from any sort of religion, and only like recently — certainly not going towards religion, but going towards spirituality, and that concept. I don't love religion, but I'm starting to understand that side of things a little bit more. And it's hard — there was resentment, there was frustration, and I think I've come to some similar conclusions as you, of being happy with where I am today. It's like, well, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for those 14 —

Yeah, yeah, that's really, really important. Say what you want about organized religion —

I've definitely said what I want to say. Definitely have my thoughts.

You know, I grew up Southern Baptist, and they do instill — at least they try, I mean, I don't see a lot of them practicing it, but the words of Jesus are very important, treat others as you want to be treated.

And that you just said the danger of religion, right — they try to instill the moral compass, they try to instill the morals that Jesus is preaching, but how effective are they really with that? I mean, I don't think I was a piece of shit, but my moral compass is strengthened not through religion, but through other things.

Yeah, I mean, you're super curious as well — there was a study I read recently about the link between curiosity and morality, and it's like a one-to-one correlation, the more curious you are, often the more morally good you behave. When I find people who are really curious, and I see them asking a lot of questions, I sort of resonate with them right off the bat, because I'm like, okay, this person is somebody who thinks about things for the sake of thinking about them, that means they're earnestly trying to figure out the best way to behave.

Yeah. That's fascinating. Can you send that to me later?

I will.

I'm really curious about that — the curiosity study. Yeah, I want to hear a little bit about — I do want to hear a little bit about your views on the world. I know that's a really broad subject.

You look like you need some water.

Yeah, I'm a little parched here. Do you have any — there's so many things we talked about, I think the last time we had some one-on-ones together, we talked a little bit about some of your views on the world, and that's what really got me into the — Law of One — and that's what got me to, I'd started reading How to Know Higher Worlds, but hadn't really like, all right, let's sit down and get into this. You talked a little bit about seven dimensions, sort of like an octave — that's a fascinating concept.

Yeah, yeah, I really like that. I take a lot of that from — I really like Nikola Tesla, he says to understand the world you have to think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration. If you're thinking in terms of frequency, you're automatically thinking in terms of octaves, and being able to stack them on top of one another. I think those are also analogous to our energy centers in our body, or chakras. And yeah, I think — well, a lot of what we're talking about comes from the Law of One, the Ra material, which I really enjoy, I think it's really fascinating. For those not familiar, it's this group of spiritual researchers who went around the world to these different groups who claim to channel different beings, non-human beings, whatever. And they learned from all of them the different protocols they use to contact these different beings, and they developed their own protocols, and then claim to have their own sessions of contacting this being called Ra, who had a lot of really interesting things to say about spirituality and the world and what's going on here. And obviously you have to take these things with a huge grain of salt, because it could obviously amount to be a very intricate, well thought out theater exercise. But the material in the book really resonates with me a lot in a lot of different ways, one of which is this idea of the seven dimensions, or the seven densities, which correspond, again, to the different energy centers we have in our body. So according to this material, we are kind of third-density beings, sort of living primarily out of our third energy center, our sacral energy center, which is really associated with our ego and separateness, and action in the world, and individual identity. And we're striving to try and live from our next energy center, the fourth energy center, where we become a fourth-density being. And so there's metaphysical connotations there as well, in terms of — a fourth-density being is sort of a member of a hive mind kind of thing. But the important thing is that a fourth-density being is living from their heart center, and so I really resonate with that. According to Ra, there are two ways to make that leap — the book is called the Law of One material, and basically the idea is there's only one thing, we're all one thing, we're different expressions of one thing. And to progress on this journey, you have to polarize yourself one way or the other — think of you doing work in the world, electromagnetic work, you're generating polarization one way or the other. And so there are two different ways you can polarize yourself through these different energy centers, as you move through these journeys of multiple lives — this isn't just a one-shot go — there's the service-to-others path and the service-to-self path. And according to the book, the way to jump from third energy center to fourth, to be living from your heart center, is you have to be either 51% polarized towards serving others, or 95% polarized towards serving yourself. So that would look like — it would really look like evil from our point of view, but again, from the point of view of everything being one, there's only one thing, so it really doesn't matter if you're serving yourself or others, it's all the same thing anyways — just pick one, in order to generate this polarization to move through the energy centers. And the idea is that it's sort of an exercise that the One is doing to know itself. So I'm not saying I fully take that on board as my worldview, but I really enjoy a lot of the nitty gritty descriptions of things in the book.

Well, I think similar to the Bible — even if there's, I mean I think there's a lot of truth in the Bible, right, but I think there's hyperbole, there's obviously some stories as well, and that doesn't mean those aren't good mental exercises, right — they're not problematic. Even if they're not 100% accurate, they might still be good lenses to view things through, just as thought experiments. I asked my dad — do you think religion is necessary to teach morality and ethics? Why? What are we doing — like, why do you push Catholicism and Christianity? He's like, because it's easier.

Mmm, and I think that's probably a common answer — it's a simple framework to understand, but potentially for the more curious people out there, who are potentially more skeptical, [asking] why is this the way, why is this the way — let's get down to it. But if you can have that doctrine lead people down a path, and they're actually acting good, and doing things in service to others, it's not really a bad thing.

Right. It's only a good thing. But I think it can be dangerous for those who question it, because for me it felt like — the resentment I was working through was like, what is the truth? I threw everything away, because I was like, start from a blank slate, we're just gonna start from a blank slate and figure things out — we're gonna ignore everything we learned for the past decade, two decades.

That's why you say that — I've described my journey in the exact same way. There's a point where I'm like, okay, get rid of everything, and just experience, and watch how reality behaves relative to my behavior, and use that as my guide.

Exactly. And I think that's a necessary part of the journey — you kind of have to erase that Etch-A-Sketch.

Wow, Etch-A-Sketch is a big theme here.

There's gonna be no one who's listening that's like, why are they laughing? But truly, you did have to erase the whiteboard, or whatever, and I think you have to start with just — start from square one, and then you can get to a point where you're like, okay, maybe not everything in the Bible is wrong, but I don't have to throw all of that away — let's actually absorb it, let's reabsorb that back into my brain and into my actions, even.

Yeah. And so it's not — you erase it, but that doesn't mean you've forgotten everything, right?

Yeah, just means you're able to look at it from a new perspective.

I definitely threw out the baby with the bathwater with the Bible for a long time, because again, so much resentment. I was like, wow — you know, the God of the Old Testament, is that not evil?

He's evil.

Yeah, I think he's evil. And what is it — he's referred to in some —

Traditions as, like, the demiurge — it's basically the evil lesser god who's sort of the lord of this domain. It's like, what kind of god wants you to kill animals and burn them so he can enjoy the pleasing aroma? I don't know about that.

Whenever I was going through my journey away from religion, and people asked me if I believed in God — I always said a similar thing, which was, I believe there's something out there, but it's not the God in the Bible. And now I think that there's some of the God that's out there that is in the Bible, and some that I don't think is.

Or if it truly is a source —

Yes, if it's — the One, if it is the source, then yeah, I guess technically that is the same God. But I don't think it's possible for me to think of that God as the true God.

Right, I mean, as far as the Bible goes, the God that Jesus was talking about, yeah, I like that guy.

I like that guy. He says he's already inside us, and I believe that.

So very different than the God of the Old Testament.

So — me too.

And I think one thing that shifted too, is I've become so much more optimistic about the world as I've moved away from religion. Which I think so many people find religion brings hope, and I get it, I do — but I struggle doing things for the sake of doing things, right? And if you tell me to be a good person because — or, no, you want to avoid eternal damnation — it's like, what the fuck is eternal? But it's like — I mean, it's also like — never take the Lord's name in vain, that's a very different thing than not cussing, right? And treating your body as a temple is a different thing than not getting tattoos. And so there's all these interpretations of the literature that aren't actually what the intent is, and people manipulate it.

But that's man, right — man is going to manipulate for self, and there we are, religion.

Yeah. It's like the story in the Bible where if a woman is found to not be a virgin on her wedding night, then you take her to her father's doorstep and stone her in front of him. It's like, was that written by an omniscient, all-loving God? Or was that written by some jealous, horny old man?

I don't know, big mystery there.

Yeah. And I really love the concept of the collective consciousness too.

Yeah, and I think there are things coming out now that are making that more believable.

Yeah. And it's like — because I've always struggled with, we were taught materialism, and that's the doctrine that most people, whether they know it or not, that's the doctrine they follow — materialism being, in order for something to be provable, or just believed, then it must have some sort of materiality to it — so observable, or measurable — gravity's not physically or visually observable, right, but you can measure it, that being materialism. Whereas — I don't know what the next step is, or just non-materialism, I guess — is just the belief that there's something that's not observable nor strictly measurable, yet provable to a certain extent, that exists.

Yeah, I think my idea of materialism is that the world is constituted of atoms, which are made of quarks or whatever, and whatever they're made of, and that's all there is, there's nothing else. But the math there breaks down beyond the Planck scale anyway, so we're really just talking about a very narrow band of reality.

Of reality, yeah.

You know, if the math stops working at a certain point, then — it's good math, it serves its purposes, we can engineer things with it, for our three-dimensional materialist purposes, but it does not explain what's happening here.

Yes. Yes, I think that's exactly right. I liked your — the concept of memory — can you share your take on that just for everyone who didn't hear?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little bit of background — well, context. I really am a firm believer in the idea of the aether, or maybe a different word for space-time itself. I think that's what's happening here — as a little thought experiment, I really go crazy thinking about waves and the particle-wave duality, I think it's nonsense, I think light is a wave, it's always been a wave, it's not a particle. So you can measure any wave to elicit point-like properties — you can even do it with sound, they're called phonons. It's like you can do whatever you want, but I think it's all waves all the way down. And if you think about waves, a wave is moving through what it's made out of — a wave in the ocean is moving through the ocean and made out of the ocean. If you have a rope and you perturb it, the wave is made out of the rope and moving through the rope. And I ask the question — okay, well, what is an electromagnetic wave, what is waving, what is it? And they say, light is an electromagnetic wave, and in order to move through empty space — because space is just empty — it's actually photons, so it's like a massless particle, but it still has momentum, and that's how it can traverse a voidless space. And I think that's nonsense. I think there's an aether, I think it mediates all electromagnetism, and we are fundamentally electromagnetic beings — we're 99.999% empty space, because that's what atoms are. So yeah, I really think we are fundamentally electromagnetic beings, mediated by this aether, this field. And so the idea to me — and this isn't my idea, I take this from Rupert Sheldrake, he doesn't talk about the aether, he talks about the morphic field, morphic resonance — the idea that our memories are stored in our body or brain somewhere, like a computer, is kind of nonsense to me, that really doesn't make sense. There are stories of children experiencing memories from past lives that end up affecting change in the real world, that can be corroborated. And so my idea of memory is — everyone has a particular resonance, and when you recall a memory, I believe you are attuning to the moment in the past, you're resonating with the moment in the past, to bring about an experience now, where it causes an experience inside of consciousness. I think consciousness — this three-dimensional consciousness — is also mediated by this etheric field. And so, what do you resonate with the most that's not this moment? Well, it's probably one moment ago, that's why it's so easy to remember what just happened, because we're basically resonating with it, it's very easy to recall. The further back you go, it's harder to resonate with those moments, so the memories get more fuzzy.

Is that because your resonance is changing, or is it just about the time?

Yeah, I think we're always changing, some people more than others. But I think emotion plays a really strong role in that as well — I think emotions are very strong true reverberations in the etheric field. And so the memories that we have — there's a really strong emotional component, either positive or negative, not making value judgments here — but those memories are easier to resonate with, because it's a stronger frequency, and it's easier for us to resonate with them, because it has a larger impact on the field as a whole. And yeah, I think that's what we're doing with memory. And it gets even weirder from there — I think people can resonate with moments in their future. Most people I know have some sort of precognitive experience they can talk about, maybe one or two — even the feeling of thinking of a friend you haven't thought of in a long time, and then they immediately text you. I feel like a lot of people are familiar with that experience. So I think we can likewise resonate with moments in our future, which is probably more fuzzy, because — whereas the past is more, we see it as fixed, the future is more this probability, possibility space, future potential resonances. But I do think there's interplay there — I think the etheric field doesn't care about when.

So, speaking of the etheric field not caring about when — what is time?

So time exists only in consciousness. If there's no consciousness, there's no time — specifically this three-dimensional consciousness that we're having here. I think there's other forms of consciousness that experience a different form of time, but consciousness detects change — if there's nothing changing, there's nothing to perceive. And I think that's the role of time — it's the function of reality that allows us to have experience, and I think that is what it is. This really doesn't go beyond that in physics — there's no arrow of time in any of the equations, they can go either way, all the equations work both ways, it just happens to be that we experience it this way. And it just mediates this experience we're having here, which I think is fundamentally a spiritual exercise. So it's only something that's experienced on Earth, or in the three-dimensional world that we know, which could include other planets and things like that. But — that's a lot harder to talk about, I think, because there are these other beings, which I believe are real, that exist from our perspective outside of time and space, but they might perceive a different form of time, for all we know. I think that's a really hard thought experiment to wrap your head around.

Yeah. And also, I think — with time being something [fluid] — if people can see the future, which there are many examples of people who have — it's not even predicted things, it's like they've seen things — we'll get into perhaps remote viewing — they viewed things in the future. Then doesn't that mean that future doesn't exist in a time in the future — maybe it exists now, just in a different capacity? Like, because there isn't past, there isn't future, there's only now.

I think it's only now, yeah.

Right. It's only ever been now.

Yeah, our ability to perceive time, as far as our three-dimensional bodies goes, is mediated by our memory, which again is the field. So — I'm sorry, what was the question?

Well, I guess I'm curious — how can you have both of these things exist simultaneously, which is ironic, for the experiment. How can you have a world in which people can see the future and know it to become true, and have a world where you can manipulate the future? How do those two things exist at the same time? I guess is my question.

That's a hard one. That's getting into almost solipsistic territory — I think solipsism is the idea that it's only you, it's you and your experience, and everything else is sort of a play for you. So the idea that you're manipulating the future — okay, manipulating everybody's future, or just your particular one? That's something I don't have a good answer for. Because I do think our ability to impact the future — that's what we're doing here, that's what we're up to, trying to behave in the world such that our future experiences, we like them more, whatever that means. And I have an example of this, of sort of the simultaneity of time correlated with the creation of the future — I've told this example before, but I'll run through it again. I think a lot of people have the experience of — they're about to leave the house and they have that feeling of, oh, I'm forgetting something, what is it, it's like I know I'm forgetting something and can't think of what it is. And then they'll leave, they're like, I don't know what it is, I probably didn't forget anything. And then they'll leave the house, and at some point later, they'll remember what they forgot, what they left the house without. And in that moment, there's an emotional reaction — probably, you're not enjoying the fact that you forgot something you needed. And then you remember back to that moment when you had the opportunity to remember to bring it, and you'll be kind of frustrated with yourself that you forgot it. And in my mind, those events are in co-creation with one another — the feeling you have of "I know I'm forgetting something" is almost being resonated back into the now, from this future state, of this emotional reaction you will have when you remember what it is you forgot. And it's almost an opportunity for a version of your future that you ended up not wanting to have, to communicate back to a version of yourself, to give you the opportunity to change it. And so from that point of view, there's all kinds of future events, that are future versions of ourselves, this possibility, probability space, and there are some of them that, in hindsight, we wish we hadn't gone down. And I think we're constantly in communication with all these different versions of our future, and the way that we can sort of create our future is by entering into resonance — aetheric resonance, morphic resonance, according to Rupert Sheldrake — with the future that we want. And so I think that's how things like manifestation are mediated. Things like vision boards — you put something on a board, and you really think about it, and you're attuning yourself electromagnetically to this version of the future — a particular one, where there could be a ton of different versions of the future. So that's kind of how I reconcile those in my mind — the simultaneity of all things — there's no now or future, but they're in communication with one another, in this relationship.

Yeah, yeah. And I think manifestation is something that's come onto my radar — I mean, this has been years.

Yeah, the Secret.

Yeah. But I think I'm only now beginning to believe it in a way that makes sense to me, or believe it in a way that makes sense with everything else I believe about the world. And I think that electromagnetic framing — you're tuning yourself to that particular version of the future — I think that's what seems the most likely to me. And it's also really optimistic.

Yeah, that's a nice plus, I like it a lot.

Yeah, I like it a lot. Right. So Drew, you're someone who really inspires me, with all of — well, so many things, but particularly your exploration in spirituality, your willingness to go 10 days — well, even more than that, realistically, multiple times, on meditation, the Vipassana retreats. And those are things I've really just started to dip my toes into, and I'm excited to continue exploring those, by myself as well as with you, throughout our friendship.

Well, yeah, it's definitely gonna be a huge goal of mine to get you on a Vipassana retreat one day.

Mean, to tell you the truth, especially when you're talking about it here — once my projects wrap up.

Mm-hmm.

Which will probably end up being like early next year, if not before then. That's when I'd like to do it.

Highly recommend it. The center near me — I actually live like 20 minutes from the Rocky Mountain Vipassana Center, which I love. They're only doing them in the summer for now, until they build their huge campus, they're gonna be able to house 120 students per retreat in the coming years, it's gonna be so good. But they're doing small ones now, and just only in the summer. But there are centers throughout the whole world, there's many in the US. The first two I did were in Southeast Georgia, Jessup, Georgia, they have a beautiful center over there.

That would be interesting — go back to Georgia, fly in, see your family, and then — right, I'm gonna go be gone for 12 days.

No, but I mean, I don't think it's gonna take very much, I think at this point it's just a matter of logistics. And I've started to have more seasonality with my job, and started to appreciate it more. And so being able to take a couple months off — I don't mind grinding, especially in the summer, it's bright outside for a while, I feel like I can work a little later, I don't mind it too much, and then in the winter I just get to snowboard a lot. So I'm really starting to appreciate that seasonality in life, which I think — I mean, all this goes back to waves, right?

Yeah, all the —

And it's funny how we live in a world — I think there's so much pressure and emphasis put on this linear trajectory, and it makes sense, right — when you're younger, you go through grade school, you learn this in year one, then year two, year three, year four, every year you're learning more, blah blah blah. And then you get into the corporate world and there's a lot of structure around raises, you get a raise this year and then next year. And my professional life has not been linear whatsoever — in terms of income, in terms of location, in terms of job, everything. But I think it's been a really good lesson for me, to learn that nothing in life is linear, or as linear as we want it to be — throw that concept away entirely, and realize it's all ebbing and flowing, ebbs and downs. I mean, how torturous it would be to only move forward, you know, like — I would not be who I am now without the hardest, most frustrating, suffering-filled experiences of my life — you would never wish that for somebody, but you kind of would, because that's how we grow, we need the ebb and flow, we really need it.

The idea that you wouldn't wish that on someone, but you also wouldn't not wish it — it's hard. There's something that came across my radar, it was like a movie or something, and someone died, but it was a character I really didn't want to see die, and I was like, that's so sad — but then I was like, but that's also life.

Yeah, it's part of it. It's different if it's murder, right, that's a little bit harder pill to swallow, because that's a choice a human made rather than something happening organically, right? But you can't have the good without the bad.

Really can't.

Without the good, you have to have the bad to be able to appreciate the good — I mean, even — I mean, Donald Trump — he has lived a life full of privilege and an infinite amount of money and opportunity, is everything you would want — to be president of the United States — probably one of the most miserable people on the whole planet, I think. Think of any celebrity, right, people grow up and they're like, I'd love to be a celebrity — all we hear about from that realm are people getting divorced and having terrible times, there's no — there's no only good. And so you have to have — there's no getting out of those hard experiences, it's built into our perceptions, I think there's almost an even balance. And so if you never expose yourself to things that are actually hard and challenging — I know we've talked about this before — then things that are not hard or challenging at all are going to feel like the end of the world.

100%. When I moved to Australia, all the time I got the question, why'd you choose to move? And it kind of bothered me, and I didn't realize really why it bothered me until later. And I remember someone who I would certainly consider a friend — she was like, you don't need to move across the world in order to have a change, or whatever. I was like, I don't know, but it just feels like I need to, it feels like — I think really what it came down to is, I just realized that I wanted to subject myself to something really difficult.

Mm-hmm.

I wasn't sure why, I didn't understand what the driving factor was for that, but I was like, I just want to do something difficult. And I've come to really appreciate that, and to recognize — there's actually nothing wrong with choosing to do something that's hard, simply because, at the end of the day, if you choose to do something difficult, whatever the motivation was, or if there was an alternative or additional motivation, at the end of the day you're evolving, you're growing, and becoming stronger because of it. And I love — you said this a couple moments ago — that kind of our purpose, in a sense, is to create a future that we desire. Well, you're not gonna create a future you desire if you're not growing, evolving, becoming a better version of yourself. So who cares what the right motivation is, as long as you're doing it.

Yeah, going back to that etheric resonance — if you are resonating with what, in your mind, is the ideal future, right, it's going to come with a lot of suffering and a lot of hardship — I say "the ideal future," that's kind of hard to characterize, but — to become the person you want to be, you're gonna have to grow, and we grow through hardship, that's the only way, lessons — lessons are hard.

Yeah, I've always been someone who's struggled to learn lessons when it's been told and taught at me, it's like, because there's so many things I've been told, that I also ended up ignoring, doing, and then learning. So it's like, on one hand, oh, I could have learned that lesson a lot easier, but on the other hand, I clearly couldn't, because I didn't learn the lesson.

So it does take that — I mean, something as simple as falling the other day on your frames, the five-wheels, it took me a fall in that, and then I was like, fuck, you know what, I learned my lesson, I have to be more aware of the length of the wheelbase of these wheels. I'm talking about rollerblades for those who didn't understand that. So yeah, I think I've definitely started to really appreciate that — there's a lot of bad, but there is no objective bad, there's no objective good, everything has both. And I think it's your responsibility, it's your duty, and a tremendous blessing that you have the opportunity, the agency, whatever you want to call it, to decide what are the things I want to take that are good, and what are the things I'm going to take that are bad.

And, you know, I think I probably shared this, but I believe optimism is just the election to weigh the good in the world, in whatever's happening to you, greater than you weigh the bad.

Yeah. Yeah, I went through some challenges earlier this year, and I really think a great state to be in is, even in the middle of the challenges, to try and be thankful for them. It's like — thank you so much for this lesson, I'm learning it right now, it's very hard, thank you — but I pray I'm delivered from it soon, kind of thing.

That reminds me of something that shifted in — sort of my concept of money — I was reading a book that talks about being grateful for money coming in and going out. So, thinking about paying rent, or paying a mortgage payment, and being grateful for the reality that you can make those payments. I'm grateful — I have the money in my bank account, I can afford a home that I love, in a place that I chose, a location that suits me. And I think too often we think about money going out as, I don't have the money anymore.

Yeah, and I get it too, there's definitely been times where things have been a lot tighter.

And I'm coming to a time where things are a little bit tighter, but — that's going to change.

But yeah, I think — I don't know, I've really appreciated exploring spirituality a lot more, because I think it's fundamentally made my viewpoint on life so much more optimistic.

Yeah, I really don't see the alternative — I mean, I know what the alternative is, but —

Yeah, I'm coming up on an expense that I'm really not happy about — myself, having to fix my tractor, after a friend of mine kind of flipped it and blew up the engine. So that's a pretty rough one to take on board, but I'm very thankful there are people who can fix the tractor, people who make new engines for the tractor, and that I will have it again. It's not gonna be fun to have that go out, but — it can be very nice to have a tractor.

Could you put like a bigger diesel into it? If you're gonna replace it, why don't you —

I didn't ask about that, but yeah, a little turbo diesel would give you, like, from 23 horsepower to maybe 33.

That would be awesome.

Yeah, I mean, you wouldn't —

That would be a fun project — let's turbo your tractor, let's do it.

Get a little turbo bolted on somehow — yeah, I mean, you'd have to swap out some parts, I don't know, that would be a fun project.

Infinite projects on the farm.

That's why I moved there.

Yeah. Do you — so, do you feel like — like, it seems like rollerblading and just random stuff around the farm are like the biggest hobbies in Drew's life — is there anything else out there? What else is there in terms of hobbies?

I've really been diving into music a lot more lately.

Cool.

I've grown up playing guitar since I was, I guess, 12 or so. But diving back into it more, and into singing more — did a lot of musical theater as a child.

Do you have any videos?

I'm sure they exist, I'm sure my parents have some. But yeah, I was in a lot of church choir productions and things like that. After my voice changed, I didn't sing a ton. I would do some open mics here or there in college, that I liked doing. Over the past few years I really kind of let that part of my life go, but I've actually started taking singing lessons again a few months ago, just to get back to the point where I enjoy singing again, I'm not worried about how I sound. I've been really enjoying that, that's been really nice. In this challenging time earlier this year that I was talking about, I found myself wanting just an outlet to express myself, and music is a great way to do that. My favorite songs are the songs where you can really feel, in the voice of the singer, the emotions they're trying to display.

It's a great way to get them out.

And it is.

Do you have a go-to belt-it song?

Oh yeah, I'm not sure I energetically resonate so much with the lyrics, but I really love Tracy Chapman, "Give Me One Reason."

Nice, I love that one, that's a really good one. My belted song is "Bad Religion" by Frank Ocean.

I don't know if I know that one — do I know it, have I heard it?

I'm sure you've heard it. Maybe I'll play it later — I don't think I'm gonna sing it. But that's a fun one. Actually, it's funny — I had my windows down, and I was just blaring that, driving around here, and there was a cop car — we were just kind of near each other the whole time, and I started screaming my head off to some Frank. And as we were driving, it started driving the same speed as me, and I was like, oh no, am I doing something wrong? And so I looked, and it turns out — my buddy, I know him from the gym — he's a cop. I was like, Kevin, dude, that was so good, what's happening, did you just hear me?

Yeah, I don't believe you [that] he heard anything, which — I don't know if that's good or bad.

I think it probably would have been entertaining for him.

Were you singing at all in the — the last part of the festival, or maybe not the last, but one other feature that we didn't mention — the cuddle puddle.

The cuddle puddle.

That was really nice. I actually didn't plan most of the festival — there's this other group of friends I was introduced to, they were looking for a space to throw one, and I got connected with them, and — the lead-up to the festival, I was actually camping in Montana the whole previous week, just had a beautiful time. And I was actually out camping when they released the festival map of the grounds, and I saw the cuddle puddle, and I was like, yes, that's gonna be great — because that was a huge theme of the camping trip as well, at night we'd put all the pillows and blankets near the fire, and it's all kind of souped up, it's so good with camping too.

Yeah, so nice. I did — I did one of the first weeks I was in Australia, I did a five or six day backpacking trip around Kosciuszko, which is the tallest mountain in Australia, its elevation is — it's like 6,000 feet, it's lower — I'm pretty sure it's lower than your farm — but beautiful experience nevertheless. And one of the days, we had just set up our camp, and the next morning we were gonna do a pretty long hike, and right after we had our camp all set up, we went to bed, and it started thunderstorming — came down, so the next morning we were supposed to do this hike, and it was just still torrential, so we all just ended up bopping from tent to tent, we'd have like six, seven people in one tent, all drinking hot chocolate together, it was —

But you were so thankful for the thunderstorm afterwards.

Yes. And it was one of those moments where — if you gave me the choice — it's gonna rain, or it's gonna be clear skies — there's no doubt in my mind I would have elected for clear skies. But in hindsight, afterwards, I wouldn't have had it any other way. It was the best thing in the world — to be able to grow closer to the people. We were backpacking for four or five days, we did plenty of hiking and viewing, it's okay if we have 12 hours of thunderstorm. Also, that was my first time ever camping in a thunderstorm.

You put that rain fly up, right? You'll be sweet. You're good, you're good.

As long as I'm not dripping wet, my socks aren't wet — I mean, my socks were wet through the hiking part. And it ended up clearing up in the afternoon, we had a beautiful hike anyway.

Nice, amazing.

Yeah, it literally could not have gone any better.

Yeah, camping and having that, you're in the middle of nowhere — I'm sure you had no service where you were.

Very little.

Yeah, very little.

So, yeah, being able to just completely turn off from the outside world.

But it also makes you really want to connect with those people around you.

Yeah, it's like this thunderstorm is affording just that much more connection with the people who, presumably, you went there to connect with. So it's like a little power-up — connection power-up, or something like that. I knew zero of them going into it.

Oh, wow.

I knew the one — so, the day I got to Sydney, I booked my hostel either on the plane or when I landed, all I had was a plane ticket and a visa for a year.

Wow.

I mean, one way ticket, baby.

One way ticket, best way to travel.

Fucking love one-way tickets. And when I landed, I booked the hostel, when I got in — I arrived at the hostel and was waiting in line to check in, and there's a woman in front of me who had a really thick Australian accent, so I jokingly turned to her, like, "you didn't travel very far." [She said] "no, my house is from Foxground" — what? I thought you guys speak English here, what did she just say? And so we got to chatting, and turns out she ran meditation, breathwork retreats, hiking retreats, and she had one the following weekend, someone had dropped out, and she was just like, look —

No way.

Yeah, she's like, dude, if you want to do it, come on. And she'd invited a few people before, and they'd been really wishy-washy, unable to actually go through with it. But I was like, literally could not think of a better thing to do. So for the next week, every day I'd text her, like, what do I need, and she'd send me a list of things, I was like, hey, I can get this, this, and this. I brought a good chunk of camping gear, I didn't bring a tent, didn't bring a stove or little stuff like that, but I had my backpack, clothes, hiking boots, all that stuff. And so I just texted her back every day, this is what I got. And she was like — "I'm shocked you're following through with this, I did not expect it." She told me afterwards, she's like — part of the reason I didn't really give you a whole lot is I've offered to provide people with everything they need — full backpack, packed everything — and then they back out. So I'm done doing that, if you really want to go, great, it's a free ticket, you can do it, but you have to actually go out of your way for it.

That's totally fair.

And that's exactly what happened, I ended up having to pick up most of the stuff, but — so before I even got there, she just texted me a name of a guy, Chris, [who was] gonna pick me up at my hostel and drive me down. And so I get a text from Chris, he says, hey, I'm Chris, I'm gonna pick you up. No, I don't think he had a last name — maybe he had a last name, just Chris — like, even if he did, what am I gonna do, look on Facebook and see like a thousand people with this name, no mutual friends. So there wasn't really an option for me to even know him. So he picked me up, and we had a six-hour drive together, talking about life. He's a total stranger.

Total stranger.

Just picks me up in his car, one stranger meets another stranger. And so everyone there, with the exception of Chelsea, the person I'd met prior, and with the sort of exception of Chris, who I met along the ride, I did not know a single person.

Wow.

But it was such a beautiful mixture of people — there's a guy who's on a TV show called "Alone," where they just throw you — I think he's in — I think I've seen that — yeah, I really don't know — you go out with like a backpack with four things in it, and you have to see who lasts the longest, doesn't die or whatever. There was such an interesting group of people. And it was really special to do that, being the only non-Australian there — I moved there to experience the culture, and I'm meeting people who've lived there their whole lives —

I bet everybody wanted to talk to you — the only American on this crazy breathwork meditation backpacking trip, it's amazing.

Yeah, they're like, how'd you get here? I'm like, I ran into Chelsea a week ago. They're like, what? Yeah, I met her at the hostel. And even her mom, who I met later on in my trip — I met her mom in Perth, because her parents lived in WA. So when I got out to the western coast, seven months later — six months later — I ended up meeting back up with Chelsea, met her mom. But yeah, even her mom joked that I was "the dude from the hostel," or something like that, which became a theme, because I would just find strangers, and they'd say, hey, I got a van — I went to a festival, some of the people I met at the retreat went to a festival, met a girl who was living out of a van for the last three years, or two years, and she was like — "do you want to go up north — I'm gonna be up there for a week or so, do you want to come with me?" I literally have nothing better. And then it was just such a beautiful snowball. Yeah, I don't know, every — every stranger, I was equally as fascinated with all the strangers, and I think they were with me. But it's always interesting being in a place where you are sort of like — you're the tourist.

I'm just a dude, you know, this is here.

Did you feel that way at the festival? People came up to you like — you're Drew.

Yeah, I really did. That was a really interesting part of the festival, because I was on mushrooms [through] Saturday, and yes, so much was being projected onto me, that was a lot to hold, it was a lot of energy, but I was very grateful for it.

But yeah, wow, that was a lot for sure. I can imagine.

Yeah, I'll never forget that — the modeling thing, that — I'll never forget the fashion show.

You ever done anything like that before?

No, no, no. I never — I was talking to Devin from Dust, I was sharing a little bit about it with him and I was like, I've just never felt — he's like, you felt like a star. That's the only way [to put it] — I felt like a star.

You looked like a star. You were behaving like a star. I really liked it.

I still haven't even seen pictures or videos of it, so I don't even know —

I know a large edit is on the way.

Yeah, the person who organized the whole thing has been sourcing all the videos from everyone, so yeah, there's gonna be, I'm sure, a big edit.

Yeah, such a blast. Is there anything that's been on your mind that you wanna discuss?

So, I'm diving back into sobriety right now, I did so earlier this year as well. I had a particularly challenging living situation on the farm last year, through November — a friend living with me, the relationship really deteriorated, went really, really bad, to the point — I won't get into specifics — but it was so bad that somebody else actually needed to come stay with me after he left, related to that... using, but — all that to say, I really didn't have my own space for quite a while. And it was February of this year when I finally had the farm to myself, really for the first time since moving there. And I used that as an opportunity to really dive into my spiritual practice, meditating two hours a day, that's what they recommend after you leave Vipassana, they say an hour in the morning, an hour at night, and I was really strict with that, sometimes I'd do a two-hour session on its own, I really didn't even time them, but things got pretty subjectively weird for a little while, I was really, really diving in, and I really kind of had to pull the ripcord — these things are getting a little too weird for me. And I had a particularly challenging experience that made me — okay, I had to back off a little bit and ground myself, I was getting a little too Luciferic, I think. And so I'm diving back in now, I feel more prepared this time, more grounded going back in, but — as part of this, doing a lot of the exercises in the book I let you borrow, How to Know Higher Worlds, and it's about opening up — trying to develop your spiritual senses to perceive — people talk about perceiving auras and things like that, and this book is really a step-by-step guide for trying to develop those spiritual organs that can detect those things. And, I don't have like a conclusion here, but one of the exercises, sort of the first one they recommend, is contemplating life and death — arising, passing away, blooming, withering — feeling where something is, spiritually, energetically, along its path — that's some of the most stark, non-physical energy that you can be met with, I think, in somebody's life — is where they are on this path, eventually it becomes manifest in the physical world. This past stint of being totally sober since the Fest, back meditating again, bumping up my sessions — hour and a half a couple days ago, hour yesterday — and really trying to open myself up to those things. One thing that's been really stark in my experience is the point along that path that my older dog is in right now, Karu. Really — wow, I really didn't think I was gonna get emotional on the podcast. Wow. She just turned nine. Sweet, sweet Karu. I love her so much, and that's kind of one of the things — I'm like, no, she's gonna live forever, she's gonna be around forever, but she's not. And you can see it on her, she's graying a little bit, she's not as fast as she used to be, and I think — that's one of the things — when you open yourself up to things like that, you're opening yourself up to things that are good and things you might not like to experience. And that's one thing this past week that's really been stark in my experience, dealing with her — she's towards the end, and that's really hard to deal with. It's such a core part of life that we should all be very familiar with, but — yeah, it's a rough one. She's been my little girl for nine years, so yeah, that's been tough.

Thank you so much for sharing.

Thanks for listening. Karu, she's such a light, I love her so much, she's one of the sweetest little things in the world.

I'm so grateful I got to be there on her ninth birthday.

Yeah, so good.

She's so sweet.

Yeah.

So the last thing I want to talk to you about a little bit was the YouTube video that you sent me —

So that was right at the tail end of two hours a day of meditation for quite a long time. It had a lot of stuff that I felt like I wanted to talk about, that I think is important for people who are on a path of trying to seek, to bring on board. And I really didn't expect it to go anywhere, I was just like, well, I have some things I'd like to share, so I'm gonna hit record and see how it turns out. And I haven't really shared it around anywhere — sent it to my sister, a couple other people — but it turned out better than I expected. So yeah.

Well, I think it does such a good job of, like, making it so clear that the physical body and our experience, our cognitive experience, is only a small percentage of what our holistic experience is. So the part I wanted to talk to you about specifically was the front end of it, where you talked about — you are not your thoughts, right? So before we get into that further, can you just give a quick, high-level overview, so that people can understand sort of where we're coming from.

Yeah, yeah. So I feel like people, if they're listening to this podcast, are likely familiar with the concept of "you're more than your thoughts," you're not just your thoughts — and it's so true, it's like more true than true. People, we think we have this experience of authoring our thoughts, you think, I'm thinking, it's me thinking, but they're so swayed by so many things over which we have no control. Here's an example I used in the little talk — try not to think of a pink elephant right now. Good luck. We had no control over level one — the language we speak, most people think in language, you have no control usually over the language you speak, it just happens to be the language you were born into, and that happens to be the language you think in, and that totally colors and couches the experience you're able to have.

Do you think in language?

Less now. A lot less now.

Less now. Yeah, fascinating. Yeah, yeah, 'cause I think I probably mentioned the podcast Very Bad Wizards — maybe not — it's like a philosopher, psychologist combo, Tamler Sommers, Dave Pizarro — I probably got them — Tamler Sommers would be the philosopher, and Dave Pizarro is the psychologist. They're reading a study on people who think in language, people who don't think in language, which may not be super surprising to you —

I have only ever experienced thinking thoughts in English, which makes sense, because I'm pretty good at articulating my thoughts, and the reason I'm good at articulating my thoughts is because there's not a translation layer there — or there is, but it's pre-thought — whereas for people who think of things and it's just abstract, they then have to go through the translation layer to speak those.

I've never heard of someone who's evolved, who's changed — do you think that's like a more — do you think that's — because, like we've talked about this, how language is just — it's so slow.

It's slow.

It's subject to so much error, so much misinterpretation — there's the potential of choosing the wrong word, and then there's also the potential of the listener to hear the wrong thing, or interpret it incorrectly, yada yada yada. Where do you attribute that change to — do you think it's like tapping into the collective consciousness more genuinely, so that there's no translation necessary, you're just interpreting it?

I think, in my experience — I think it was because it was really after my second Vipassana retreat that the change really started to happen, and I think it has to do with getting closer to the source of the thoughts, something closer to that collective unconscious from which thoughts arise, that if you can become comfortable without having to have language in your mind, and experience just the concepts and the images, sort of the — I call them like packets — I feel like your ability to think can really open up, where you're no longer limited by the English language. Then if you want to translate those to somebody else, you have to go through the translation layer. But then I think what ends up being communicated is actually much closer to the actual thought you had, if that makes sense.

So if you, once you go through that translation, you're sort of able to better understand the concept?

I think so, yeah. Whenever I'm explaining something to somebody, it's come from somewhere pre-linguistic, because I think that's where our intentions come from, is a — pre — we adopt our intentions, I think I said this in the talk, wordlessly, we aim at something wordlessly, and then thoughts come. And so if you're more in tune with those intentions first, and why you're having those intentions, then you're more in this world of imagining how the intentions play out on a larger scale, and the implications of them. And language really doesn't come in so much until you get to the point where you're imagining talking with somebody else, or you're recalling a conversation you had in the past to give some context to the now. Yeah, I really think, for most people who are habitually thinking, or thinking without being aware that they're thinking, language is one of the worst ways to do it, I think — if we're spending time and thought intentionally, whatever goal you're trying to achieve by thinking is much better served in a pre-linguistic state, if that makes sense. I'm not saying one should strive to do that — it's something that happens, rather than something that you do.

So it kind of sounds to me like, if you really truly know a subject, you're able to teach it on like a, what, five-year-old level? Almost like — if you have to go through the exercise of talking, of saying it, then you have to jump through all the hoops of deeply understanding it first.

Yeah, because you're not just regurgitating the exact language you've thought in the past and re-saying it — you've thought about the concept, you've really been in the concept, and then when it comes to explaining it, you don't have to think about the words, they just come. And I think if there's a misunderstanding from the listener, you're able to adapt the words in order to educate them on it.

It's not about the — because if you're just memorizing something, then you're not going to be able to adapt it for someone else's understanding, because you can't. All you know is — that's all you have, that's the one version.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Yeah, I really don't think — like, getting back into, you know, we're not our thoughts — there's just so much about our internal experience that — if you really think about it, to think a thought, wouldn't you have to think it before you think it? Or to author a thought, we'd need to think it before you think it — like, when we experience a thought, it's like, for the first time, what are you gonna think next? What am I going to say next — that's an example Sam Harris used, it's the same — the next thing that comes into my mind is as surprising to me as the next thing you're going to say. And I think we get ourselves in a lot of trouble when we believe ourselves to be authoring our thoughts, because oftentimes we're exposed to so much negative media — if I scroll on any social media app, it's people getting mad at each other, people arguing, "I'm right, you're wrong," and that just becomes what fills our consciousness. And if you think that's you, what a world of trouble you're in, you know?

Yeah, but it is obviously modulated by what we consume.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, well, because I'm thinking of, like, for telepathic nonverbal autists, right — if they're able to hear your thoughts, right, and Ky Dickens goes to talk about how they are some of the most honest, sincere, genuine, caring human beings on this planet — in fact, it's very difficult for them not to be honest, very difficult for them to have malintent. And when they're observing, hearing other people's thoughts — where I'm going with this is, if I were in the room with someone right now who knew what I was thinking, are they gonna look at me like, you are a fucking piece of shit? And so it's a little — I guess it's comforting, on one hand, to know those thoughts aren't "mine." But on the other hand, it's also my responsibility to ensure that I'm not — the shittier my thoughts are, then that's a representation of everything around me being —

So it's still a responsibility of yours, to sort of position yourself such that the thoughts you're experiencing are not repugnant. But you also shouldn't feel the blame entirely for everything that's going on in your brain.

Precisely.

Yeah, it's not to say we shouldn't endeavor to cultivate the quality of our thoughts — that is something we can do, I believe. The specific content, what ends up appearing in consciousness, that is the result of an infinite series of things, over many of which we had no control. But in that talk I mentioned, that I recorded — I really think the quality of our thoughts is determined by two things — one, our intention, which we adopt wordlessly, that's pre-thought, what are we aimed at, what are we attuned to, how are we aetherically vibrating, what do we want, what are we aimed at. And then, how are we resonating — are we in a high vibration, aimed at love, or a low vibration, aimed at disconnection? And those two things together, I think, culminate in what we end up experiencing as thought. So we should really endeavor to cultivate the quality of them, but allow yourself the freedom to not engage with every thought that comes in as if you authored it, and feel responsible for it. I mean, that's — Rosicrucianism has the Six Basic Exercises, and the first of which is cultivating control over your thoughts, that's just it, because that eventually bleeds into the rest of our lives. If there are thoughts in your head, you have adopted an intention, whether you know it or not. And so trying to become aware of what that intention is — is very, very important. I think a lot of people are really unaware of what their deep intentions are, moment to moment, rather than just becoming or staying comfortable. And then two is trying to align yourself to the good, and to connection, and to love, rather than disconnection and power and authority and things like that.

Thank you so, so, so much for your time, it's been such a pleasure.

Wow. I don't know how long we've been going, but this has been so fun, this has been a really great experience. Thank you so much for having me.

Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Wow.

Wow, we really got in there.