Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life Podcast. It is the first Tuesday of the month. And for all of my incredible listeners and the audience out there, And to all the people who may be joining us for the first time, the first Tuesday of the month is when we have the incredible Reverend Dr. Jester Rochester. She's the madrina and president of the Sioux de Montreal, a Santo Daime ayahuasca church she founded in 1997 in Montreal, Canada. She's a transpersonal counselor. She trained in the work of Dr. Roberto Asagioli and trained with Dr. Stanislav Grof. She worked with Health Canada from 2000 until 2017 to achieve a Section 56 exemption to import and serve the Santo Daime Sacrament. She is an ordained interfaith minister with a doctorate in divinity. From 1986 to 2018, she has been a workshop leader, a teacher, and in private practice. She is the author of Ayahuasca Awakening, A Guide to Self-Discovery, Self-Mastery, and Self-Care, Volume 1 and 2. She continues to lecture on consciousness, non-ordinary states of consciousness, self-discovery, spiritual development, health and well-being, and personal transformation. It is her mission to inspire and empower those who seek the adventure of self-discovery, those who hope to awaken consciousness, to rediscover authenticity, to find meaning in everyday life, and cultivate deep connections with oneself and others and with nature. Dr. Jessica Rochester, thank you for being here today. How are you? Well, thank you. It's always a privilege and a pleasure to hang out with George. We always seem to, at least on my side, we get into deep, interesting conversations. And hopefully we won't disappoint today. So we've been walking around what I call the circle of wholeness. And for the last couple of months, and what that is, is we are, you know, we began the journey a while back, you know, based on the work that I presented in my books about self-discovery. Who am I? Why am I here? You know, where did I come from? Where do I go when I die? Where was I before I arrived here? You know, all these existential questions that everybody asks themselves at one point or another in their life. Okay. And sometimes it takes a, um, you know, kind of a big issue, a big change in our life to start questioning as maybe it's an illness, a change in our career studies, our family, the loss of a loved one, an accident, you know, um, you know, a financial change. And then we can just have to stop and say, okay, what's my life about? And so this section, which is part two in volume two, it's called The Circle of Wholeness, is all about, you know, the areas, I divided it up into the areas that we are connected to in life, that we have a role in, but that it plays a large role in our lives, our individual lives. And so we've been walking around the circle of wholeness and the circle in most traditions represents wholeness. So if you look at most spiritual, religious traditions, deep cultural, long-term heritage traditions, you're going to find that that's what the circle represents. And so it's the circle of wholeness. How do we find wholeness in our everyday life? And how do we find balance? and the things that we've been talking about. Now, today we're going to talk about modern science and ancient traditions, okay? And, you know, this is an area that really kind of fascinates me because I love to see what remained and what are the heritage teachings and what are the rituals and what are the beliefs that remain and how are these being looked at, examined by modern science and what can we learn from this? The one thing we're going to see in common is that which is true lasts. In one of my hymns, I see one of the verses talks about the truth making room for itself. And in the end, that's what it does. The truth makes room for itself. And all this sea of misinformation and misdirection and obfuscation, all of these things that seem to be designed who drag us deeper into illusion, okay? Those of us who seek truth, authenticity within ourselves and around us need to, you know, look sharp. The main teaching is awareness, okay? And that's part one, you know, in self-awareness, self-love, self-respect, and self-responsibility. All of that is in part one of volume two of the book. So I just want to take as a jumping off point something that I really find super interesting. And I'm actually going to read it for those of you who are interested. It's a poem too. And what are the maladies of our time? I think if we look into, you know, there's so much happening around the world all the time, whether it's advances or whether it's armed conflicts or whether it's, you know, new rockets to Jupiter or whatever it is, there's just an immense amount of things that are happening. And we need to find a balance of informing ourselves, which is that which we're either quite interested in or that which is pertinent to our health and well-being, and trying to leave all the rest, all the chatter, all the chatter on one side. But what is in our hands? And what do we have a say in and choices about? on an individual, personal basis. I'm not talking about trying to control and change things outside of ourselves, right? I'm talking about what we can actually do in our own lives. So if we look at the last century, the rates of physical, mental, emotional diseases, illnesses, syndromes are escalating. Would you agree, Joel? Yeah, absolutely. Like quantum leaping. Now part of it is improved technology that creates greater communication and a better ability to assess and gather and assess information. So part of that is better reporting, better gathering of evidence, okay? So that's a part of it. But a big chunk of it is what is happening and why is this, okay? We can see that the following factors absolutely, according to science and research, play a role. Poor food choices. Excessive food intake. We eat too much. Sorry. It's reality. Obesity is becoming close to the top of the syndromes, maladies, illnesses. Processed, unrefined foods in the last century. Artificial food ingredients and additives. Lack of exercise. Insufficient sleep and rest. It's fascinating. If we look into each of these things and see the science on it, we're going to see that there's enormous value in us paying personal attention to the options and choices that we have to improve our health and well-being. Insufficient sleep and rest is huge. I'm going to just drop out there for a moment of the list and come back to it. And I'm just going to give a little bit of research, all this you can find in these chapters here, okay, on sleep and rest and the importance of it and what they're finding out now about the brain and about health and about longevity and about the illnesses that we have, the level of dementia and Alzheimer's and, you know, is astronomical compared to the population base far, far beyond what was happening. And so we have to take all of these things into consideration. What people don't realize is that in research, they took a group of people, and this is often like graduate students, okay, undergraduate students, because they could always use a little extra money. And they put them in a sensory deprivation environment in which they didn't know day, night, time of day, nothing. They knew nothing. So they're in That's their level of sensory deprivation. They had lights that they could turn on. They had things that they could do, okay, but they had no access to phones, televisions, nothing. So they had no contact with the outside world, and they had no idea it was day or night. And what they fell into was four-hour cycles. They fell into four-hour cycles of activity and then some creative rest, some quiet, meditation, reflection, because they didn't have all those things to distract them, no phones, no TVs, no nothing. And so what they found was that they fell into this natural biorhythm cycle of sleep and rest, and when they examined it to our lifestyle, our current modern lifestyle, they said, yeah, people might be getting seven or eight hours sleep. Technically, that should be enough. What they're missing is rest, that quiet, reflective, that we used to have in earlier days where we would just go and sit on the front porch in a rocker and look at the stars. We'd go and lie in the meadow and smell the grass and listen to the little crickets or whatever. We'd go for a walk quietly, a meditative walk. We weren't immersed in sound and noise and light all the time. all of which is a kind of pollution to us when we can't get away from it or turn it off. Carrying on in the list, the repercussions of smoking and substance abuse. We all know this is huge, right? Pollution of air, soil, and water. I mean, funnily enough, it took the catastrophe with birds, especially the predator birds, the falcons, They couldn't understand why they weren't nesting, why their eggs weren't hatching, why the eggs weren't fracturing. And they found it was pesticides, right? DDT. So it got banned. We can only wonder what the accumulation. My daughter sent me something the other day that says the amount of microplastics that we ingest every day that probably stays in our body, goes every month, sorry, It's about the size of a credit card. Watch that in your brain. See if that's going to do you any good. Now, here's another one. A few more on the list. Insufficient daylight and excessive exposure to artificial light. It's a reality. And the artificial light, we all have to use it, but try and make it full spectrum, being whole. section on light and how it affects our body and why we need it we're like plants plants can't grow if you go give them enough light we you know what's really strange george is we know enough when we're doing hydroponics and growing stuff I mean ask any you know before cannabis legalization ask any marijuana grower they knew what kind of lighting you needed needed in your illegal greenhouse, okay? They knew exactly what kind of lighting was needed. How are we so foolish that we don't realize that we need, that we need water and air and sunlight and, or full spectrum lighting? Why are we so short-sighted? Electromagnetic field smog. Again, there's a question mark on these things. There's, you know, the earth has an electromagnetic field, right? We have electromagnetic fields. Our bodies are electric. Don't talk about Montreal winters. Static electricity is a commonality. We snap, crackle, and pop our way through the winter. Noise pollution. It's pollution. People who live in downtown New York City, now they have a honking band. But before that happened, I don't know, did you ever go to New York when they didn't have a honking van? It's all light, honkity-honk-honk all night. It was crazy. Okay, last two, insufficient contact with nature. This is shown to be really important. And the last one, which has, of course, five bells on it, unmanaged stress. Now, this list is all something that we can do something about. There's nothing on here that we can't personally do something about. We can change our diet. We can take our supplements. We can get more exercise. We can go outside in the middle of the day if we live in a northern climate. And of course, like George, you might walk out the front door with your flip flops on. However, we've got to dress so there's only this much showing, you know, when it's minus 20 and minus 30 and what have you. So all of these things. And then let's add some other things, okay? Prescription medications. How many millions? I'm just talking about Canada now. I can look it up and refresh the numbers. Okay, and it's published in here. How many millions and hundreds of millions of prescriptions are written for medications to try and offset the list I just read? So you have insufficient sleep and a poor diet and too many chemicals going in your body and not enough sleep and rest and you're not getting enough exercise. So you get all kinds of symptoms. So you go to the doctor, so you get medications for them. What do you have to say to that, George? I'm sure you've got, you have the, I'm thinking about it and I think I have something to say expression on your face. I feel like we've been conditioned to give up our authority to live our own lives. It seems like so much of these things, whether it's the processed food or insufficient sleep, it seems to be this sort of overbearing idea of being productive in society. And I think that stems from giving up your own authority, from not believing or being self-aware, loving yourself. It comes back to self-awareness, I think. Well, yes, always it comes back to self-awareness. And now we're going to segue into more self-awareness. So thank you for giving me that wonderful drumroll entrance. Did you, you know, were you thinking in my mind? Of course. You've read my books, so you kind of know what I'm talking about. So, yes, awareness. Are we aware of what we're doing when we go in the grocery store and we make our choices? When we go to our doctor, if our doctor is not asking us about our lifestyle, well, you know, our poor GPs, they're overwhelmed. We don't have enough of them because who wants to do that, right? And get paid not enough money to see too many people who refuse to take self-responsibility for their own well-being and health. Now, you know, I don't want anybody to think that I am in any way diminishing the real impact of genuine conditions because I am not and I don't want anyone to think that I'm saying that all conditions are as a result of the list that I just said okay I'm not you know I have arthritis I have a cyst in my hips I got all kinds of things going on I have a congenital deformity in my spine no diet on the planet is going to change any of those things okay but I can diminish my symptoms. I can manage my symptoms. I can keep myself flexible. I can keep myself a good weight. I can use positive mental attitude. I can use the absolute minimum amount of medication when needed to manage symptoms that sometimes can get unmanageable, especially long plane flights or long car rides or something. It's using the least amount of medication that you need, having done all the other things that you can do. Does that make some sense? Yeah. I don't want anybody feeling offended or slighted thinking that I'm pointing a finger at anybody saying, Hey, all you have to do is do ABC and you know, your illness will disappear. No, it won't. Possibly or probably. but the same way somebody with, for example, type two diabetes, as soon as it starts happening, you can actually, with diet and exercise, you can actually reverse it. Modern research is showing us that we can, we can actually neuroplasticity. We thought the brain was kind of casting this concrete, you know, that it didn't change. Well, there's some things that you can't, you know, that you can't with, The science says we know it today that we can't do certain things, that they can't recover. But other things we're finding that, wait a minute, epigenetics is showing us that we can do some things that we thought we couldn't do in the past. Okay. Anything you want to add about that or any questions you want to ask about that stuff? I think it's a good point. I'm Yeah, I'm curious to hear when we move forward. I think that there are definitely things that we can't control, but maybe that's where grace comes in. Yes. The serenity prayer. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And so here we are in a society and a culture, and we're all trying to find our way. And so now let's look at, you know, having dealt with kind of the what can I do for myself on that kind of physical well-being because the more well we feel in our body, actually the more well we feel emotionally and mentally and the more well we feel, you know, spiritually, let's call it on the soul level. So the better our body is balanced, then automatically we're going to be in a better position on a soul mental health level. You know, for example, in Europe, Some of the very first approaches for people who are depressed is regular exercise. Diet change and regular exercise, you know. And I'm not discounting the very important use of therapeutic support, group or individual, as needed to, you know, whatever it is that's, you know, going on. But in the end, it's the individual decisions that we can make that help us feel empowered and more well And then coming from that place, we can manage infinitely better whatever's ahead of us, whatever challenges we face. Now, we're looking at kind of ancient traditions and modern science and where we did that little segue to see, okay, well, where are we as a culture and a society as individuals and the options that we have to get more well. So what do we learn from ancient traditions? And I wanna bring back in non-ordinary states of consciousness because that's, as you know, key to so many things if we look at ancient traditions we will see that they had a wisdom they knew which plants not to eat you know if you look into nature you'll see that the monkeys go and check out the tree or the figs ripe yet you know and you know every creature on the planet knows when the plants ripe when the berries are ready you know the birds the bees every you know they all know OK, because generations upon millions of generations have taught them this is the good moment when the day length is like this, when the hour is like that, when the tide is in, when the tide is out. OK, now is the time to gather your food, lay your eggs, find a mate. OK, and so they move in. This is kind of what one of the pillars of this conversation. They move in harmony with nature. We don't do that. we lost our way on that one. And so we look at nature and we see it's still trying despite human activity and despite the repercussions of too many humans on the planet and human activity and our arrogance to assume that we can do what we want with nature. Let's just ground it down and do a concrete it over. And, um, And we see that what's happened is we have completely lost touch, most of us, with nature. And how do we return that so that we understand that the heritage wisdoms, the indigenous people around the world, they tried to hold on to those traditions and wisdoms and teachings, which has, of course, been battered by you know, invasions, whether it was European invasions or whether it was, you know, Eastern invasions, turn the corner and go on the other side of the world, they had the exact same thing going on. So, you know, the movement of humans around the world with our aggressive territorialism and our tribal instincts, you know, whatever I believe, whatever I think is the right, the only, the one way, right? and are the conqueror's position of dominating instead of working in harmony with. And so it's brought us all to where we are right now that so much heritage, wisdom, and tradition has been lost. Unfortunately, some of it is trying to be recovered. And one of the things that is helping that is the non-ordinary states of consciousness and the use of sacred plants. As you know, of course, I have worked now 28 years with the sacred plants that I work with and which are a precursor to non-ordinary states of consciousness. These plants are used sacredly for divination and ritual, for rites of passage, traditionally for thousands and for millennia upon millennia. We do not know how long they've been used because we're written records. We only have stories and mythologies and traditions and teachings that are passed down on all these sacred plants. And so it seems like the current use of sacred plants, which has escalated in this last, what, 25, 30, let's say 30 years. 30 years ago, there was almost no conversation about it. Basically, there was almost no conversation 30 years ago. Now it's everywhere. Okay. Okay. And the question I have for you is, will it be enough? Will the use of these sacred plants, how modern science and modern society is hoping or trying to use them, and will it be enough to help awaken enough people to understand how to really take care of themselves and how to reunite with nature in a way that brings a harmony, not just to the individual, but hopefully for community, nations, and worldwide. Because if that doesn't happen, well, we're up the creek, all of us together in the same boat, right? Yeah. We're going to go deep on this one, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think it will be. I mean, when I look at the cycles of life and the cycles of the planet, how can it not be? I mean, I think the earth has its own rhythm and its own harmony and it has its own infinite wisdom and it knows what's going to happen. It just depends on the severity of the situation. Will it be a culling to the point of a few people left over or will be, will their awakening be enough for more people to survive? But I think that the earth has all the time in the world. Well, millions of years. Okay. And, Yeah, I'm reminded of, as you were talking, I'm reminded of this wonderful, do you know the cartoonist Gary Larson? Very well-known cartoonist. And it's a very old cartoon that he did, and it's a doctor's examining room, and on the examination table is the earth, and the doctor's standing there frowning, looking at the earth, and says to the earth, you have a severe infestation of humans. And that's from like 20-something years ago. I've always loved that because it's like, boy, did he ever nail it. Just absolutely nailed it. When do we wake up? When do we wake up? What will it take? All these great teachers have come trying to wake us up in so many different ways, you know? And then, you know, in this last century, a few scientists, you know, Chapo Al Gore, you know, our wonderful David Suzuki, you know, who for, is it 50 years? They just had an anniversary, The Nature of Things. David Suzuki, the wonderful Canadian scientist who's been trying to wake people up on TV programs for, I think it's 50 years now. And just to understand nature, to understand our connection with nature, to explore nature, to, you know, and so we have these, you know, Professor Brian Cox, shout out to him, You know, the particle physicist from the University of Manchester. Please, everybody listening, please, please, please watch his show. If you like Neil deGrasse Tyson, you're going to love Brian Cox. He's just in a whole universe as far because he's so spiritual. At the same time, he gets the spirituality behind and with and, you know, enfolded within the mystery of the universe, okay? And so here we have modern science that is actually confirming confirming the things that ancient traditions have been saying. You know, you speak to any indigenous group of people, they're going to tell you, nature, you know, me, you and the tree, we're one, we're all connected. Anything we do is going to affect the birds and the bees and everything. So around the world, people have understood through the millennia, the importance of staying in right relationship, in right relationship with nature. And when we're in right relationship with ourselves and then we're in right relationship with nature, you know, that is an automatic given that within our small circle, we can have a positive influence. You know, we can't, unless we have some calling like Martin Luther King or Gandhi or Al Gore, you know, name any other person who's taken a prominent position on this. whether it's peace or whether it's, you know, take care of nature. But unless you have a calling for that, then we really only have our little small circle that we can try and educate and teach and be the role model for. So we look at where they're needing. And if we look at the history of this, we can see that, you know, what's really interesting is we can see in all these ancient traditions, that how they merged their relationship with nature and the cosmos and their spirituality, it was never separate. It wasn't separate. For them, spirituality was present in everything. And their spirituality respected this and unfolded this. Now, I'm not trying to at all romanticize past cultures and traditions. Yes, of course, and we need to. you know just name that piece is there was a lot of things that were superstitious um there's things that today we call it of course sorcery okay um you know there was all kinds of things that were uh through superstitions that became practices you know god's angry papa virgin down the volcano and so you know a lot of things happen that we can look back and say what you know they But somebody had evil spirits. They actually drilled holes in their head so the evil spirits could escape. Before they understood about malaria, a virus being transmitted through mosquitoes, they used to think that it was some kind of strange swamp spirits that made you sick. And so there's a lot of things that we just have to name it that were there as humans stumbled along moving forward in understanding things. And yet, how do we treasure the good, you know, the truth that shines like gold through all the millennia and the centuries that we can say is alive and right today? And how is it meeting the research and the science, the modern science of today? And it is, and that's what's fascinating. You know, I had a vision once. It happened in a meditation, actually not in a work, so I wasn't, but since I'm a child, I have a lot of visionary dreams and visions and things that I didn't understand, but I just accepted that doors would open and I would experience things. And in my meditation, it's as if I saw this tapestry, this, I don't know if you've ever been in, you know, say a museum or, you know, traveled and gone into cathedrals or you know, ancient stately homes and manor houses and things, and you'd see these gorgeous, intricate tapestries. And it's sometimes being shown that the human civilization experience was like this story told on a tapestry. And, you know, this giant tapestry was in front of me, but what was extraordinary was there was this tiny sparkling thread of gold that wove it, swayed all through the tapestry. And I was fascinated looking at this thread of gold and asking, what am I looking at? What am I seeing here? And it was shown to me what I was seeing was the history of the human race and how busy we were and how much so much of what we do and think and want and get attached to took so much space. And throughout all of it was spirituality, was the presence of the unknown, the great mystery, the divine. It was always there glinting away if you look for it, you know? And so what's really fascinating is that modern science is confirming so many of the things that ancient traditions said about the nature. You know, great spiritual teachers, the gurus and the saints and everything. Even Einstein said, what? I'm never alone. There's the collective unconscious. I'm surrounded by the collective unconscious. For me, he was using a language to describe his experience, no different from the guru who would say, God is all around me and God is within me, you know? There's no difference, it's just a language difference, slight conceptual and language difference, but that's it. We're all saying the same thing, you know? So here we have modern science, which has been, you know, Thank you to all the scientists. Thank you to the current scientists and researchers who are doing such good work trying to understand the mysteries of the non-ordinary state of consciousness. The challenges that are existing right now in the research that's being done with entheogens, sacred plants, and psychedelics. So thank you to all of those who are reporting faithfully and honestly. And thank you to those who are dedicating their master's thesis and their doctoral studies and their post doctoral work to trying to understand what is this and how does it, you know, what does a non-ordinary state serve and how can these things, how are they affecting our economy? And so we can see that if you look at almost everywhere in modern science in the last 100 years, okay, we can go back to early biologists, okay? And early biologists 100 years ago were talking about Morphic resonance. Okay. And I'm going to talk about Sheldrake and his work. I refer to him quite a bit in this section. And about how, you know, the energy bodies and how the mystery, the biologists were trying to figure out, okay, how come if 98% of our genetic material is the same as chimpanzees, okay, how come it turned out so different? Okay. That 2% can't be making that much difference. What is it? And what I love about how these folks think is they say, it must be like there's an architectural plan somewhere. There has to be. That's what they call a morphic resonance. There has to be a morphic field. There has to be some kind of architectural plan somewhere. And that plan works through the genetic material The same way when an architect designs a building, there's the architectural design, and then you have to have the contractor to actually take the building materials and do the building. The architect doesn't do that. The architect draws up the plans, okay? And yes, the contractor can truly bugger it up if they use the wrong materials and if they try to cut corners on the quality of the materials and stuff like that. And that happens in genetics too, right? And so these are just questions. We don't have answers for them yet, but aren't they fascinating questions? And we can go back also, because there was a great curiosity that started to happen. And we can genuinely shuffle to all of those early researchers and scientists who had these inquiring and curious minds, who were just deeply determined to try and discover whether it was the mysteries behind gravity and the universe and magnetic fields and chemistry and biology and just about every field in physics and going further out in the telescopes and smaller down in the microscopes. And so all that information, how does it help us? It helps us understand the nature of life. It helps us understand the cosmos and the nature of things. And it helps us to understand our place in it, our connected, our interconnectedness with it. And so about the same time, about 100 years ago, that all these different researchers were asking such fascinating questions, we find that some researchers were doing what they called psychic research. And they were trying to explore phenomena, which up until today, we have to say we can't really understand. I encourage people to look into the work of Larry Dawsey. He's done quite a bit of reporting on it. And of course, so has Rupert Sheldrake and others. And so what do we find? We find that, of course, there's a section in my books on this. And so we find that early researchers were trying to figure out, is there a spiritual life? Are there realms? How is it that somebody... over here sitting in your living room has an instant understanding of something that's happening hundreds of miles away or thousands of miles away. How does remote healing happen? How do people, you know, they did a study, for example, on remote healing. They did a study with post-cardiac surgery patients and recovery time. And what they had was a group of people, and this is all, you know, about prayer. And they had one group of people praying for the people who were post-cardiac surgery. And they had a group of people post-cardiac surgery who were not being prayed for. Now, the prayer, praying, okay, all they knew was a name. I think even maybe a first name. And they didn't know much else. And they were using non-directive prayer. Do you want me to take a moment and make a distinction between directive prayer and non-directive? Okay. So in all research, directive prayer doesn't work. Non-directive prayer works spectacularly. An example of non-directive prayer would be the work that they did, the research that I'm just going to finish telling you in a second, was the research they did with plants. We had people who had a strong prayer life with non-directive prayer and go and pray over it. The way they used to always have priests and the shamans pray over the crops. And all the people were doing was going and sending good, positive energy. They weren't beseeching any individual in the astral to do anything specific on their part. Okay? They were just simply sending positive, good, loving energy to the plants. The plants that received that grew beautifully. Okay? Compared to the ones who didn't get it. And the same happened. So that's non-directive prayer. We're not telling anybody or anything. We're not saying to the plants, grow. We're not asking some divinity being, make these plants grow. All we're doing is being the channel for light and love and good vibrations. That's non-directive prayer. Directive prayer is telling God what to do. That's very different from asking God Praying and asking for courage, asking for faith, that's very different. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when you go tell God what to do. Okay, that doesn't work. Back to the post-cardiac surgery patients. So the ones who were prayed for in a non-directive way, in other words, just sending light and good vibrations and healing vibrations. Their recovery time was extraordinary. They had a much faster recovery time. They had infinitely less depression. They had infinitely less complications. In other words, post infections, post surgical site problems. Now that's worth doing. Okay. When I had cancer and I had to have a surgery and I went into surgery, not knowing if I'd come out with a leg or not, you know, I didn't know how I agreed with my surgeon. You take what you need to take, you know, So I had no idea what they were going to be doing while I was under for six hours. I had two dear friends who made it their business to hold me in that kind of prayer the entire time. And they sat in the hospital sending good vibrations to me. Now, they were the first people, other than my surgeon, when I came out of the anesthetic. I came out of the anesthetic. They said they'd never seen anybody come out of anesthetic like that. I wasn't sick. I wasn't throwing up. I was nothing. I just, like I was gently waking up. And I woke up in the elevator coming where I came to in the elevator, coming from the surgery ward, heading towards the post recovery ward. And, and my two friends were there and my doctor was saying to me, you know, I'm really happy. I think I'll get everything. I think you're going to be great. It's going to be fine. And then he smiled and nodded to my two friends and he says, it's okay. You can just say hi to her. And so they said, hi. And he said, I haven't quite seen anything like that before. This is how you came out of, you know, out of surgery like that. And I said, those two people were praying for me the whole time. You know, and I had such an easy recovery, no complications. Now, you know, it doesn't, all it takes is your love and your good intentions. And if you're not sure how to do it, ask someone to teach you how to do it. You know, if you're not sure how to do non-directive prayer. Okay, wandering back to, so 100 years ago or so is when they really started getting very interested in trying to do science and research on what we would call today the non-ordinary state of consciousness and what we experience in expanded states of consciousness. Okay, I talked a lot. Do you have some questions? It's interesting to me. to see on some level I think science has gone awry like they've they've thrown the baby out with the bathwater they've decided that if you can't measure it it's not important and I see it kind of swinging back on some level it seems to me that you know they when and correct me if I'm wrong but it seems that until recently science has decided that non-ordinary states of consciousness whether it can be telepathy or prayer or these things that were not measurable, that they decided we're not going to talk about them because we can't measure them. It's sort of just like throwing everything out. And it saddens me a little bit. And I think it's kind of coming back. Is that? Well, it's always been there. It just doesn't make money. Yes. Sorry. I'm sorry. But it's just the reality. There's no money in it. And so it's really hard. It's really hard for scientists to research any areas where there's no money in it. And so all the big backers are looking for the next product. I mean, it's just how our culture's gone and society's gone. I mean, it's just a reality. We need to name it. I'm just naming it. It's by design, I think. Do you think it's by design? I think that there's a force bigger than us that is like, you're on the wrong track. So you know what? Go ahead and spend all your money over here. You're on the wrong track. And you will sit down on the road at a certain point. Yes. The road to Damascus. You know, there's a wonderful saying about fighting your way up the ladder only to find your way that is pressed up against the wrong wall. That's a Joseph Campbell quote, you know. And this is the reality. You struggle down the road to find out if this road doesn't lead to inner peace or inner contentment or health or anything else. This leads me to the sea of lost souls and a hell realm, you know. And literally. It's like, why did I turn right at that intersection? Yeah. And so we all have to learn. And if we're smart, we learn quickly and we don't. We're still going to make mistakes, but hopefully not the same mistakes over and over again. That's the piece. There's no end to making a mistake, okay? But we don't have to repeat them over and over and over and over. you know okay back to the dialogue ancient traditions modern okay so one of the things we're seeing okay is all of the heritage traditions which have so much to offer in the way of wisdom and teachings and ritual and what works and what doesn't work okay and about their you know many of them have their own especially those you know um those peoples who have been using sacred plants for thousands and thousands of years and the teachings passed down about the beings and the realms that they connect with and how to manage, how to prepare yourself, how to manage the afterwards, how to work when you're in that state. You know, that's an accumulation of millennial wisdom, ancestral knowledge that has to be respected. But for usual, okay. And, you know, and then you have the human race and what we want, we'll come to that in a moment. Then you have modern science is trying to kind of catch up, you know, because it's sort of saying, okay, well, you know, and, and part of the, part of the, you know, challenges is, you know, I named it a minute ago is, is, is there many in it? And so we can see in the psychedelics, um, That, you know, there was a lot of clinics that popped up and a lot of marketing and a lot of fast trainings that got put into place. And, you know, you want to get your certificate to be able to do this. And I'm not pointing a finger at anybody here. I'm just saying that this is what's happened. Okay? And these are realities that we just simply have to address is what's driving that? So you have your researchers that are genuinely interested and curious who want to explore what's actually happening when people take these substances and what happens, you know, when we compare it to other experiences and et cetera. Okay. And then you have the people who are, who are all excited about it because it looks like a way to heal a way, you know, because it's all about healing and healing trauma and healing, you know, wounds and, you know, that kind of personal healing, you know, category. And so there's a big kind of percentage of people who are focused on that. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I'm not making any comment in about anything. It's just what I'm seeing, you know. And then there's the people who are in it for the money. You know, how fast can we get that clinic open and can we get a big name to sign off on it and can we get, X, Y, and Z to be on our board of advisors. And how many clients can we see? And that's what some of the researchers who are looking into this and some of the conscientious journalists who are writing about it are trying to do a deeper dig on these things. And so that's the current reality. Have I left anything in? There's the entheogen heritage practitioners. There's the, you know, say like the Santo Daime, which is a hundred years old now. So a hundred year track record and research and community, et cetera, based on millennial traditions. Okay. Cause that's where our roots go. You have, you have other traditions that are still trying to keep their niche of their heritage rituals and traditions. And then you have these other things that are happening and, You know, what do you see as the future of this? You look like I'm the great fan teacher and I've just asked you a complicated math question. Step to the board, complete the formula. Okay, I'm tapping. I think it was Yogi Berra who said predictions are hard, especially predictions about the future. I'm hopeful that the people that are seeing... I think it's upon the individual. I think the individual finds the healing they need if they're willing to do the work. And I don't know that a certificate can certify you to do anything, especially in this realm. I think that you coming from a lineage and understanding tradition, I think there's real power in that. And I don't see that as something that a lot of people are embracing now. It seems that there's the McDonald's of transformation that we see happening. Oh, I love that. McDonald's. Cole Butler. Oh, you're quoting somebody. Okay. Chapeau Cole. Yeah. We always got to give the shout out. I agree a hundred percent. You know, first of all, we can't predict what's going to happen. All we can do is look at human nature and see what happened in the past. So that's likely to happen in the future. Industry will come in. Industry will try to make it big. you know, there'll be some conscientious people, the thing will either blow up and disintegrate or hopefully good continues to happen. And so we can look at what is the possible best outcome of ancient traditions and modern science as it pertains to non-ordinary states of consciousness. What are the best potential outcomes here? How do we understand? And how do we build that bridge? Now, this is a conversation for me that goes back 35, 40 years, conversations I've had with Stan Grof, okay, about building the bridge between science and spirituality, between ancient traditions and modern science, and building that bridge. And he always felt that transpersonal psychology was the bridge because we could create a language to speak to both sides. And most people who are in transpersonal work understand the science and embrace it and understand the heritage traditions and even modern spirituality you know and so it's a question of how do we continue that dialogue so that it doesn't polarize and and and there's benefit that can come so that we can respect the heritage traditions we can We can respect the apprenticeship. How many times have I said on your show, I was 14 years in the apprenticeship under the elders until our church went independent. We sat down, made our discussions, and made the decision as members to vote to become independent. It's not a driving church. With great respect to all the teachings and everything that we've received. And so it's difficult for me to see somebody does two or three months in a course and calls himself a shaman. At the same time, so yes, there's the people who apprentice in the heritage traditions, the recognized entheogen spiritual traditions. So that hopefully will continue. Those will be respected. The value that people have to contribute, to bring their voices, their teachings, and their wisdom, that there will be a space for that that will continue. And at the same time, there is this, you know, that was one of the categories included was what do we do with, you know, modern science, journalism, research, all of that. They're doing their thing. Okay. And please continue doing your thing, guys. We need the research. You know, in 2013, at the end of the MAPS conference in Oakland, California, it's a funny story. Do you want to hear it? Yeah. I had a vision. The MAPS conference was going to be, I don't remember, I think it was like early spring, like May, June, something like that, in Oakland, California. And so the information came around and I'm sitting either in meditation or work, I forget. And I got shown that I need to be at that conference and that I need to make a little meeting. I need to make a little meeting to open the conversation. So this is 11 years ago now. open the conversation about the need for norms and standards, because I could see all of this, that our sacrament was being, starting to be used in what I call hybrid ayahuasca use. This is not a criticism. It's not a judgment. It's just a term to kind of describe. It's not the recognized heritage indigenous use, and it is not the recognized spiritual tradition use, the recognized ayahuasca religious use. Okay. It's none of those things. It's other things that people are doing with it. It's not science. It's not research. It's people making, let's call them ayahuasca circles, where they're doing whatever they're doing, a form of retreat, a form of healing, a form of meditation or prayer or something, who knows what, okay? And so I felt the need to speak to this topic, and so I called up a few colleagues. I'll give a shout-out to B. Labadee and Jeffrey Bronfman and Ken Tupper and And I said, hey, what do you think? Maybe we can make a little meeting. You know, are you going to MAPS conference? Could we make a little meeting? And can we talk about this? The need for people to recognize the need for norms and standards and legalizations. Otherwise, they're going to screw it up for everybody. Okay. And so it was a very sensible, what I thought was very sensible and realistic conversation. And so within almost overnight, okay, almost overnight, I realized, I think something's happening here. I had this kind of thought that, okay, there's going to be a meeting. I envisioned maybe 10 people around the table having dinner together and having a chat and doing a little think tanking or something. And before I knew it, it kind of was like a wildfire and it kind of took over. And people were contacting. So a colleague offered to keep registration. The next thing we realized that there was a serious number of people who wanted to be part of the conversation. They were writing to me saying, Hey, I hear that there's a meeting happening. I want to be part of it. And so we rented the last available meeting room in this enormous conference hotel. Okay. That they, that the hotel said to me, you could only put 45 people in this room and it was the last room on site. So we said, we'll take it. Okay. So we had 45 people standing room only door open people collected outside. Okay. Um, we had to do a meeting the next day of another 45 or 50 people who were cranky that they didn't know about the meeting and hadn't been invited. And some of them were really very, you know, kind of cranky. He was a little cranky. I didn't know it was going to be a meeting. So, Here I am with this poof meeting, and we called it the Alliance 204 because there was everybody there. I mean, there was absolutely everybody that could make up there. And at the end of the meeting, it was where I met Brian Rush, who is the, you know, Dr. Brian Rush is the senior scientist emeritus in charge of the research facilities at one of the largest, University of Toronto, and the largest research center in Canada and so forth. And that's where I met him. And he came up to me and he said, what can we do? We introduced ourselves to each other. And I said, Brian, could you do some research? And that's where a research approach started because there was researchers there in that room from Europe, from Brazil, from the United States. They all showed up. And it was just amazing. It's what happens when you Just follow the simple direction. I was shown to do this at the meeting, call these few people. And the next thing I knew that happened. Okay. An enormous amount of contacts were made in that meeting. And that's where some excellent research. The only thing was, is what can we do? And I said to the researchers, do research. And they did. They called it ETOP. And it's one of the, it was one of the first researches done in Ayahuasca that included non, South American or Brazilian researchers, which actually is important to do because it's a diaspora of the sacrament. And so you have to have European and or American and or Canadian researchers involved in this, you know, because believe it or not, and I know you're not going to be shocked by this, but in academia, there is a certain level of snobbery. You know, if the research is out of Oxford or Harvard or, you know, is somehow more posh, you know, then, There is, there's a hierarchy in academia. And that's one thing that academia has to own. You know, it has to own that that's there. You know, we can't be blind to our dark side. And so how important is the research on this and how important is the willingness to meet and speak about what's going to happen? And so, you know, my part in that exchange, in that meeting, was simply telling people, if you're going to be doing this, if you're going to be popping up with your kind of hybrid ayahuasca circles, I don't have an issue with it. It's up for the governments to decide. This is what I have to tell. I have a lot of people who contact me. They want to get legal. You're legal. I want to get legal. Well, okay, what are you doing there? Okay, hybrid ayahuasca circle. And, you know, one of the first things I really should be saying going forward is don't pretend you're this number by name. Jeffrey Bronkman, many years ago, told me about after they had their Supreme Court win in, what was it, 2006? 2006? You know, in a short order afterwards, it was a couple of groups who pretended to be Unio Divisital to be able to, and they just went, no, you know what, you can't do that. And so, you know, of course these things are going to happen, and the reality is we need to be mindful that that it's not okay you need to what I've been telling people is you have to be able to stand on your own two feet and you have to be willing to stand up for what you believe in and what you believe that what you've learned and you are congenital than doing and what you are practicing is is if you believe in truly in what you're doing then you need to have the courage to go in front of the government judge I'm not wrong here and while you can't hide under the radar. What does that say about what you believe in? You know, I've been in the face of our government since, you know, since the year 2000, preparing from it from 1996 when I came back from Brazil. It's like, oh God, at one point I'm going to be standing with my hat in my hand knocking on the door. So we have to be willing to stand up for what we believe in. Would you agree? Without a doubt. so a lot of the people who are practicing under the table and doing their own thing and thinking that they you know you spoke about credentialing say more about that what's your philosophy on that who has the right to serve who has the right to serve who has the credentials to serve who has the ability to serve who should be serving I don't know that I have the authority to speak on that. You have your own intuition. Yeah. I got to think about it for a moment. That's okay. Yeah. It's a big question. I know. You know, While you're thinking about it, and you can put your hand up when you've got an answer. Yeah, I will. A gang spirit told me to do a few things, do that conference, sit down with a couple of colleagues and look at writing a little paper, doing a little research, which turned into Entheogens and Psychedelics in Canada, Proposal for a New Paradigm. We address all of this. It's right there in the paper. Anybody who's interested, go to my website. You can download a free PDF, or if you're a member of the of the Canadian, any order really, I think American too could easily, yes, American or Canadian order of psychologists in your state or province, then you can access through into the journal, Canadian Journal of Psychology, we publish there. And we address all of this. And heritage traditional people who have been apprenticed by elders should have the right to continue without any form of persecution under the norms and the standards of their traditions. What happens is when they go rogue. We can talk about that. We may not have time today, but ask me. That's another huge conversation is when they go rogue, okay? But, you know, for the most part, okay, they should be respected and not harassed. If they're traditional elders in their community who have done their apprenticeship, Because that's how these things worked, is you did your apprenticeship. And it was the elders in the community who recognized when you were ready for the next step. And this is around the world. You know, there's a wonderful story, I think it's a Jack Kornfield story, about the individual who's apprenticing in the Buddhist tradition. And he reached the moment where he thought he was ready to graduate to the next teacher. Because that's what we do. You go from teacher and then your teacher will usually tell you, I've taught you and now you're ready to be taught by my teacher. And that's how it goes from kindergarten to high school and beyond. And so there's this wonderful story that he tells about this young man who's been studying and training with this one teacher for years and he really thinks he's ready. He thinks he's ready. And so he goes to meet and sit with his teacher and they begin their, you know, salutations and their greetings. And then the teacher smiles at him and the student says, if he thinks he's ready to take the next step, you know, this teacher looks at him and says, it's raining today. On which side of your shoes did you place your umbrella? Student can answer. So he went away rather humbled. And he spent another four or five years with that teacher until the teacher said, are you ready? So it was almost the same when we were training with Stan Groff. Stan Groff had a flexibility. It was a minimum number of years. You couldn't do the training in less than those years. And that was, you know, that was breakneck. foot to the floor on the pedal speed, okay? That was hitting every module and devoting yourself full time to it. And that was, you couldn't do it in less than that. And then there was a maximum. If you still hadn't finished after X number of years, if you hadn't completed all your modules, if your supervisors were feeling you're not ready, well then you can't do the practicing. I'll certify you, but only as in teaching, not in practicing. And so he learned from his elders that that is true apprenticeship. I think one of the biggest problems that happened in education in this last century was the good intention but misguided doctrine of Barbara Bush, the first lady of President Bush, who had this policy of no child left behind. And so every child was promoted grade by grade, whether or not they learned their skills. Instead of every child needs a good education, okay, and those who need extra help, we'll make sure they're going to get the extra help, which I would be on board with that backing. It gets my vote. No child gets left behind. So the quality of education, the standard of teaching dropped me. And the level of education dropped. And I think that's a huge problem of which we are still seeing repercussions. How can any child go through school and then not be fully prepared to go into any higher training or certification or university? They don't have the learning skills that they should have acquired. And so apprenticeship is essential. And in our modern day, what, you know, the whole education process, completely other conversation, but, So much is happening in the education process. I have colleagues who are professors at university, and they're weeping into their dinner when they're talking to me because they can't just teach anymore because so much of academia is swept up in what I would consider to be cultural issues or social issues that have nothing to do with education. You know? seriously, another conversation back to apprenticeship. So we're looking at apprenticeship. Now we're looking at credentialing because we have all these psychedelics on the market, which are, you know, being used for research. Totally got my vote. Keep researching guys, keep reporting journalists, keep writing up, you know, keep presenting the reviews and everything. Please keep doing that. Keep looking into everything that you can look into and report fairly and honestly, good reporting. Okay. And then you have that middle bracket that I was talking about. And we can break that down. And it's important to do this. Here we have people like in Canada. We were working with the Organization of Spiritual Care Providers. I want to give a shout out to them. These are really good people. These are people who are trained here in Canada as spiritual care providers, which means that they are They're pastors, they're reverends, they're rabbis. They come from their own spiritual traditions. There's anthropologists, there's social workers, there's people who are trained to be spiritual care providers and who work mostly with the ill and in palliative care with the dying. And they have a beautiful gift to give because they are trained, they have a calling to sit with people who are ill, who are suffering, and who are dying. They are trained to work with them. And these are the people in whose hands I really believe that the, you know, in Canada we've had a number of exemptions released for psilocybin for end-of-life care, you know. And I think that this is the work that Stan Grof did. He was working in palliative care. He did three LSD psychotherapy sessions with his trained staff in certain ritual settings. and found that people were able to complete their lives and face their death in a completely different way once they had these experiences. And so I'm really very supportive. So I think that these people working in that field, in that particular way where they are trained to work with, they're trained to work with these situations and to offer these spiritual tools and support and compassion They should have the right to be able to sit with people who are taking substances. Would you agree? Yeah, I think so. Most people, if you look at the science, most people are going to have a profound psycho-spiritual experience in the non-ordinary state of consciousness. That's what they're going to have. They're going to have some kind of, it may be a profound, difficult psycho-spiritual experience. Okay. you might genuinely enter into dark realms and difficult passages. All the maps for that are volume one. The territory is not the maps, but the cartography really helps when you go deep exploring. And so, yes, you can have a very difficult passage, but based on my years of experience, I can tell you it's the difficult passages, being able to understand them, be prepared for them, get supported going through them and having an understanding of how to work with them so that they can resolve and you can work with yourself in the passage so that you can gain for the higher good in it. Okay. There's a lot of skills needed to support people to do that. They need a lot of skills. So the heritage traditions have that because they've been taught that and all their apprenticeship, the people who, who work in, let's say, spiritual care providers, they just need a little extra, some extra, you know, maps on the personal work and the kind of experiences people might touch into. So a little bit more education. And there's two universities in Canada offering that now, University of Ottawa and Vancouver Island University. And I believe that U of T, University of Toronto, will be launching something similar. And so there's possibilities for that. And then you have a whole group of people who are medical professionals, psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera, who have kind of the background in training that you would automatically assume would be helpful for that. And, yes, they have an enormous amount of training, and most of them understand ethics, but their maps are a bit small. Our maps of the human psyche are a bit small. Are we going to be able to help understand profound spiritual experience and help people know how to work with those? The mythology that we enter into, the realms that we enter into, the beings that we might encounter, the experiences that we might have. Do they have sufficient training in that? And if so, you know, again, this is something that we addressed. How do we support that gets added in. So credentialing is a really important topic to just keep discovering. Did you have something you wanted to, remember we were gonna come back to you to see what you were thinking? Yeah. It seems that there runs a problem of corruption. You know, when we look at governments, be it in a school or in a country, too often the integrity becomes eroded. And then that gives way to credentialing that doesn't hold to a standard that it should be held to. And that's the problem for me. When I start thinking about who should serve or who should be the person that allows the people to serve is how do you stop the corruption from seeping in and being a degradation? Yeah, yeah. you know, yes. Tick to all of those. Those are all really important points to, to keep in the conversation. And, you know, I said, I use the, you know, except when they go rogue. Yes. Shout out to Kylia Taylor, her work, uh, shout out to Jack Kornfield, um, after the XC, the laundry, his book, Kylia Taylor's, um, The Ethics of Caring. I think everybody working in the field should read those two books and my books, of course, because I cover all that stuff too. But these essential understanding of vulnerability, caregiver vulnerabilities, as long as we are owning them and addressing them, they have much less power to take us over. If we understand that working in non-ordinary states amplifies the risk of of transference and counter transference and vulnerabilities because it does okay then we if we work with that and the and you know the suggestions that they have is to make sure that you have colleagues that you feel able that you can take discuss your vulnerabilities with and discuss the areas of problems and for god's sake get supervision when you need it you know that's the main problem I think is human arrogance we won't say you know what I'm not sure if I'm handling this okay I'm having difficulty with this and this seems to be what's happening to me I had a beloved friend for decades who was also had a private practice and um He worked with his wife who was a psychiatrist. He was a psychotherapist. And he and I would have lunch almost every week. We'd head down to Chinatown. We'd order up our favorite dishes. And we'd sit there for hours tossing around everything about our challenges. We did the Course in Miracles, the Course in Miracles together one year. We went through the daily things. Every single day we had a course call first thing in the morning. So we supported each other through that. that's what people need. You need to have at least one colleague, better if it's two or three, where you know that if you have a challenge, if there's something inside of you that you're not understanding. Now, for some people, that could be a personal psychotherapist. You take it to your therapist. That's good for me. You know, if that's, you know, at least you're discussing it, you're working with it, what's coming up for me, what my countertransference is in this situation, what my vulnerabilities are. what I'm scared of, okay? I mean, I think I've told you when I first brought the central dining back, I mean, I had past lives coming up for me and it was like everything was in fast forward. It was coming up so quickly for me, I was having a hard time like integrating it, okay? And so I was still doing breath work almost every week just to try to integrate what was coming up for me in the dining for that first at least two years. I was using holotropic breath work as a way to, you know, I had a colleague who would sit with me and we'd sit with each other you know, when wanted or needed. Because what was the main thing coming up for me is how many lives I had where if I followed my spiritual path, I got killed. And literally, okay, killed, okay? Literally, literally killed in not very pleasant ways, okay? Burned to death, you know, all these kinds of different things. Stoned. So for a while, I had to tell myself they can arrest me, but they won't kill me. They might put charges against me, but they won't kill me. And I literally had to use that mantra until there was enough energy work off, you know, but thank God I knew enough to explore my vulnerabilities. Does that make sense? Yeah, of course. So what do people need? You know, we're talking about the people about the, the common human shortcomings that we all share. You and I aren't sitting here saying they have a problem. No, we're saying this is a human vulnerability that we all share. We all have shortcomings. We all have personality glitches that become our little areas where we can trip up, where we can screw up. And we need each other. We need a supervisor, colleagues, a support, something in which we can share these things and own them. and gain the support to find, you know, something that I'm always discussing in our church, on our board of directors, with our senior clergy, is what is for the higher good? What are the options here, and which one is for the higher good? And if we're all willing to do that, then we'll be able to find our way forward. But we need to sidestep around our arrogance and our We need to do what Jesus said when he got tempted by Satan and said, hey, get behind me. I never understood that. Why would he want Satan behind him? I am what he's doing, quite frankly. But it's like I'm so confident in going forward in my path. I don't care if you're behind me. You know what I'm saying? It's like, oh, okay, I think I'm getting it now. I think I'm getting it. And Buddha met Mara and all those wonderful stories. They became friends afterwards and would have tea and complain to each other. My job's harder. No, my job is harder. People hate me. People love you. No, it's too hard. I don't want to be loved. I don't want to be hated. So, you know, if we keep a sense of humor, if we own our vulnerabilities, if we recognize if we do or don't have the correct training or credentials, I think that's also the repercussions of entitlement that comes from children being told they're special. Well, there's a vast difference between, honey bunny, you're special to me, which most parents should be saying to their children and their grandchildren, you're special to me. You're special, okay? And you're special, and this other one, if you can do anything that you want. Well, actually, no, we can't. We can try and aim for it. We can try and work towards it, but I think it's much healthier if we teach our young ones Take your strengths and develop them. Be open-minded and curious. Go where your heart feels like it's pulling you. Recognize your shortcomings and learn how to master them. I think that's a much better message, quite frankly, than you're special and you can do anything that you want and you're entitled to have anything your little heart desires. That's been the message that's kind of worked its way into a North American, Western civilization mythology about being a human being. Does that particular... Does it make sense what I'm saying? Just the way that I see it. No, I'm curious. Does that also have... It seems to me that if we look at the... the split in religious ceremony sometimes where the child of the person who serves or the child of the highest priest is in line to become the priest versus the person who might be better acclimated to become the priest. Like if you look at the Muslim religion and use the Sufi versus, is it the individual who may be best suited or the child of the person? That seems to be whether it's in business or in religious ceremony sometimes that we have this problem. And that's the same thing. It's just so special, right? Well, and it's just part of the human experience. It's part of the human experience. Now, if we draw from the wisdom of heritage and traditions, this is what it looks like. It generally looks like that the community itself, the tribe itself, and let's call it community, the community itself would keep the elders and the shamans in check. that the elders in the community felt every right to call out the shaman if the shaman or shamaness or medicine man or woman was doing something that was not in alignment with what the community believed as a whole. They felt it was that every person had their right to speak up and be heard. Now, again, maybe this didn't happen everywhere and not in every culture, but I'm thinking the best of this. If we take the best of this and say that each person needs to be heard in a community, each one needs to have their voice, be respected, then there's much less possibility when you have the elders looking at the shaman, shamaness, medicine man, woman. There's much less risk of unethical behavior. It's not happening now. Who has their eye on what's happening? Who has their eye on it? Nobody. If you're in a heritage tradition, such as I am, then I did my apprenticeship. I had my guidance from the elders. I reached the point where I was now an elder, training the people, right, and teaching the people. But as an elder, I'm smart enough to know that I don't do this alone. And hopefully I keep all the good teachings. And everybody in our center knows that I'm always saying it's a team. It's a community. It's a team. It's not an individual cult here. This is team. This is our particular, the Santo Daime is a team. It's a community. You know, everyone has their place. It's not one person kind of cult. It's not the priest and the congregation kind of thing. So each different setting needs to look at. In the science and the research settings, you have your supervisors, you have your peer reviews, you have your double checks on what's going on. And so it's in that kind of in-between realm. You know, if we were talking about spiritual care providers, they're going to have their code of ethics. They're going to have their supervisors. They're going to have their organizations. be supporting them and hopefully keeping them and reminding them of their norms and their standards and it's it's just a big question where all of this is going so how do we keep the dialogue open you spoke about that you know science seems to shut out spirituality that we can trace back to when You know, the body was owned by doctors. It goes back a couple hundred years when the body was owned by doctors and the mind was owned by this burgeoning psychiatry field. Okay. And the spirit was left to the clergy. And so we had this separation in three different directions. And, you know, many people have been trying to bring that back together, that my soul doesn't belong to a clergy. My soul belongs to myself. But dominant religions, especially the patriarchal ones, will try to possess your soul. That's a whole other conversation. Anyway, do you have anything you want to add? It's been wonderful having this conversation with you today. It's always a wonderful conversation. Thank you. My pleasure. There's so much in depth to learn about this and to discuss about this, and hopefully people keep the conversation rolling along and understand the importance, you know, going back to where we started, that when we take care of ourselves, again, this whole conversation maybe we'll talk about it another day, but if we take care of ourselves and if we are aware of ourselves, and what we can manage and take care of. That list I read up front. We're being as well. We're making all the positive, healthy choices that we can to get ourselves well. And then when it comes to our spiritual life, we have the same checklist about who we go and surrender our soul to. We have an advisory for external events on our website and in our visitors' information, which is if you're going to go, it's up to you. To see where you're going, who you're doing it with, what their credentials are, what you're taking. All of this is essential. This is on you. That's a big conversation right there. Yeah. For another day. Yeah. It's always a pleasure. And I hope that everybody who's listening or watching to this today or tomorrow in the future, I hope you go down to the show notes and check out the two-volume set, Ayahuasca Awakenings. Go down to the show notes and also check out the website. It's full of information. You can reach out to Dr. Jessica yourself. inquire about what the information on the website or order the books on Amazon. I highly recommend everybody do it. I have both, and I think that they're a wonderful set of knowledge that you can turn to from time to time when you're seeking some questions. And that's all we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you have a beautiful day and aloha.