I don't owe you ladies and gentlemen Welcome back to the True Life Podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. I hope the sun is shining. I hope the birds are singing and the wind is at your back. I want to welcome everybody back to this January eighth episode, twenty twenty five. Today, we embark on a journey deep into the heart of the Amazon rainforest and far beyond. As we introduce a guest whose story is as rich and transformative as the ecosystems they've dedicated their life to protecting. For over a decade, they have stood at the crossroads of business and biodiversity, championing true humanity by speaking with nature and advocating for a karmic approach to change. Their work is rooted in positive activism, transforming corporate boardrooms into platforms for conservation, climate action, and community upliftment. As a recipient of the prestigious PEA Award, that's People, Environment, and Achievement, their efforts have garnered global recognition from conceptualizing campaigns with Sir David Attenborough to regenerating rainforest alongside Fairtrade Coffee, Their short film created for the Earth Optimism event inspired a movement to see hope and solutions in action. But their gifts are not confined to accolades or headlines. They carry something deeper, an inner treasure discovered in the silence of nature's wisdom and shared with a world in desperate need of reconnection and redemption. Today, they join us to share their insights, their hope, and their vision for a future where business and individuals alike find harmony with the earth. Please welcome a pioneer of purpose, a storyteller of sustainability, and an advocate for life itself, Andy Orchard. Thank you so much for being here today. How are you? Thank you, George. Yeah, I'm very well. Thank you for your kind words. Sometimes one listens to those words and they think, God, someone's written them about themselves, but you, George, have assembled those words for your audience. So thank you. It's a, watch me with them. It's beautiful. Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting when we first, you and I first started talking, it was the language you use that really kind of pulled me in. You have a really wonderful grasp on it, on, explaining the world around you. How did that come to be? Were you always fond of language? Is it something that you have worked hard on to do? Or how did you create this wonderful relationship with language? That's a beautiful off the bat question. You know, I think falling, I might say falling back to the original language of life and how the orchestra and the symphony of nature within it. And I might say it's all come together through that. Looking back, I'm not sure if I was such a wordsmith before it, maybe there was some signals but um it came to fruition through through that and that george was um spending every single day for many many months going out and speaking with nature and finding out how she reveals herself reveals her secrets reveals the way of of living ah I love I love that the idea of things being revealed to us. So often, so many people spend a lifetime in school where they learn from the stories or they learn from the lessons of someone who may have done it before, but there's nothing like the experience that really reveals to you the answers, right? Yeah, for sure. Truly learning from source, I'd say. And there's no Chinese whispers in that. It's just, there's no sort of human condition. There's no bias. There's just, yeah, pure. Purity passed onto purity, I'd say. But at the same time, I mean, that's wonderful, but it's also a lot of listening and a lot of creating space to sit in that field, in that environment. And testimony to that is, the ability to then sit with other tribes that have learned exactly the same way and to speak of the same thing as well. So it's all on our doorstep, it's all in our garden, it's all in our nature to be able to speak from a common sort of language beyond human-made words. Yeah, it's brilliant to think about on that level. Language is one of our greatest tools, but sometimes it seems that we're just side monologuing or talking past each other. It seems sometimes the wellspring of language is without meaning. Yeah, totally. And beyond words, what's being expressed, communicated and carried across? And then you're into the nature of transmission that's far beyond spoken language. Yeah. Yeah, you have spent an amazing amount of time in nature, an amazing amount of time listening, an amazing amount of time corresponding and just listening to nature's language. We could talk about that a little bit. You've spent a lot of time in South America. You've spent a lot of time in the lungs of the world, whether it's in parts of Africa. How did that come to be? What inspired you to go and take all these treks? What are you doing down there? Okay, so it's like this. As a child, I grew up by a big forest and I would spend as much time as I could in the forest. It's where I felt home. It's where I felt complete and whole. And so it's only natural in the working life if we're to, you know, what's the saying? If we love what we do, we'll never work a day in our life kind of thing. So it was only natural that I think life would steer me towards being able to align the work that I'd need to do with nature. And so life brought me to coffee and working for a coffee roaster. But working with an agricultural product that comes from the tropics, that comes from these biodiverse lands, I guess it was serendipity that I would try and align the two. And I guess my principles instinctively being taking coffee from a land, what do we give back to the land? And so I created the Pure of Fairtrade coffee brand, which was a novel concept for a Belgian company and started returning gratitude by the way of monetary support and energetic support to those very regions to safeguard the future of the commodity we were working with. And that led me, after the creation of many, many nature reserves with a UK charity called World Land Trust, gave me the opportunity to go to those lands myself, to coordinate some documentary films to try and showcase the beauty of life coming out of those places at a time where I mean greenwashing was already prevalent back then in its micro forms so it's how do you distinguish yourself as those that are truly doing good versus those that are suggesting that they're doing good and how do you speak how can you speak about these beautiful biodiverse places in the world without having stepped foot in them so That was it. I disappeared off and put these documentary films together to try and showcase the people drinking coffee to the people buying coffee, all this goodness that was happening all the way around it as well. And to continue the story, off the back of that, I disappeared off into the middle of the Amazon, into the real deep end, to a place where the river boils. It's almost a hundred degrees Celsius and so there's steam all around and there was a a center there with a correndero called Juan Flores. And I spent a month there learning by doing, learning his ways through the medicine that he conducted in a very truthful manner. not only with with ayahuasca but working with all the plants and the trees and the elements that surrounded the the center and it was um a beautiful insight into a a deeper sense of nature human nature and our true nature I might say man is it sounds so picturesque it sounds so storybook in a way to get to experience what it's like to be surrounded in nature like that. I spent a lot of time in Hawaii and while it's not the Amazon, I did some really amazing hiking through some rainforests. can really learn a lot about yourself your place in nature just by sitting quietly and observing everything that's happening around you like there's millions of things happening you're just so if you just look down and you see the way in which the ants are moving up the stem of the small plant bringing the nutrients like you just realize like and it hits you like a ton of bricks like Oh, I'm part of nature. I'm part of this ecosystem. And, you know, you start to get this feeling of wholeness. Often people talk about this sense of wholeness they receive under, you know, maybe plant medicines, even coffee. Or, you know, when you change your state of mind and you realize you're part of the whole. Wow, what an insight it is, right? Like, I can only imagine. Can you take us back to a time when... choose the place that you went to, but when you were sitting and just surrounded by nature, maybe some of the insights you had and what it felt like and explain to us the landscape that you were in. I'm going to do something interesting. I'm going to step into the idea that you don't even need to go anywhere, that it's all within you. And so through the work that no doubt we'll get onto in a moment, the ability to manifest the full force of nature through one's being that is impossible to articulate, but is impossible not to feel, experience, witness, and be in awe of, I would say. So this full mother creative force that sits within us, that works through us as well. So in one sense, no need to go anywhere. In another sense, wow, man, yeah, I've been blessed with some beautiful places, and I have to... I have to probably pay tribute to the Sierra of Colombia where I was at about this time last year and where I'll return to pretty soon to one of the most biodiverse places in the world that's a natural pyramid that has four indigenous tribes that escaped being conquered that retained original language and that retained original human line I would say back to the kind of beginning And to be invited to sit with them in a place that doesn't invite people to normally go. And to be in a puritive environment where you can truly be you, I'm going to say. And when I returned home afterwards and I was asked, how was it for you? I was like, man, I was able to be me. And that's not often one can do that because you need full truth of environment on the outer to kind of bring forth full truth of environment on the inner. That's what I saw, discovered there. And that was beautiful. It's another thing that's going on there. And you touched on being in the kind of wonders of nature and The kind of full spectrum of biodiversity is probably a great example of a full spectrum of energetics going on that are all working together to bring kind of full balance to a point. So it should be impossible not to sit there and fall into that yourself. Certainly for the more sensitive people, you naturally climatized it, so you feel it as well. I think one starts to witness how that is falling away in our world a little bit and how fewer and fewer places one can go to, to rekindle that true feeling. Yeah, well said, thank you for sharing that. I can't help, but when I think about, For me, one of the biggest allies I have is psilocybin. And I can't help but think how dangerously beautiful it's been for me. And I think a lot of people that I speak to, and I say dangerous because it seems to me that when nature reveals some truth to you, they're not always easy truths. Sometimes they're the things that you don't really want to know about because what you know about them, you can't unsee them anymore. Like, man, I've been pretty angry for a while. I remember a few years back when I started this whole new version of who I am. It was not too long after my son had died. And I remember I had sat with psilocybin. I was on a really interesting regimen. I had done some really large doses followed up by some micro doses. And I began to see this thing grow exponentially. The hole that was left by the death of my son and it was it started off with anger and yeah I was mad so angry and upset and the more that I thought about it and the more that I sat with nature and just Realized like you know what? I'm really mad at I'm mad that I'm weak, you know, like all of these things just started happening in my mind like man Why am I so why am I not standing up for myself? Why am I living this life that I don't want to live? I The problem with that coming to this idea of why am I living this life I don't want to live is you got to start making some changes. They're not easy. Maybe you have to walk away from a job where you're getting paid a hundred and fifty. Maybe you have to give up a house. Maybe you have to leave the place that you were born. Maybe you have to leave where you are. Maybe you have to leave a relationship. Maybe the people around you start thinking, this guy's a little crazy, man. He's eating a bunch of mushrooms. Or this guy's doing a little too much plant medicine over here. He's making us feel uncomfortable. But I bring up this story because I think that people who sometimes find their way to psychedelics or plant medicines, it seems so beautiful. But that's really one of the first stages is this attraction to it. After that comes a lot of work. When you start really trying to work on yourself, Man, there's a lot of work to do, at least in my case there was, and there still is. Maybe you could talk a little bit about your story, about being attracted to these different kind of medicines, and maybe some of the realizations that you've had, some of the work that you have done inside and out. Okay. So thanks for sharing, first of all. I wasn't aware your son had passed away, so big man love. Man, where would I start? I mean, let's start here. I didn't want to particularly be here, is what I'm going to say. It was a big drop for me, like popping up here. And yet, I would say there was a mission to do. and this is a theme run through certainly a lot of people that want to change aspects of the world and are driven to do things there's a slight discomfort here and so so one needs to comprehend what that discomfort is and we've gone Essentially, we've gone from a place of wholeness, fully lived wholeness into separation and into human body and into an elemental astrological makeup that forms our lens on life. And then we're going to have to kind of work our way through it. I'd like to say it's a game. I'd like to put life as a game, yeah? That's what was first told to me the first time I did Psilocybin, actually. It was, man, you know life's a game, right? And I was like, oh, okay. So let's play it as a game. And there's losers and there's winners and there's good moments and bad moments. And that's, you've got to kind of take it in your stride a little bit. But essentially it was like, okay, why don't I want to be here? And I... And I'm gonna say that took a while, and that took degrees of suppression to fit in a little bit, to conform. And I'd say, but there's always that, it was destiny, in my case at least, it was written in the star's destiny. So it was gonna, things were going to become so directed and driven within my experience here that I was gonna go off hunting on that side of things. And where would I say? So, you know, how would I put this? Man, when you go digging, you go finding, you know. And you're right about psychedelics in that they're a useful tool. They're not the only tool. And I had this chat with someone very recently as well, in an interview actually, and I spoke about the microdosing side of it as well, and degrees of dependency that are forming around that. So you wanna maintain that state, so they're taking something to maintain it. But that stops them finding that state and maintaining that state through their own self. They're relying on something external to themselves. So when I took psilocybin, which I grew myself, by the way, as well, with intention, and I instinctively immediately knew how to work with it as well. So I might say the distractions that perhaps the majority of people lose themselves in, I was way beyond. I was like, that's not interesting. Like go straight to it. And so I would, I was taught and I was, I would take them in the day and I'd walk around the land and I'd be taught and I'd be taught loads of things. So I was taught spirituality at the beginning from psilocybin. And I, let's say I did it eight times because it would also impact my, my liver. I would feel, I don't know if you felt this, you'd feel like dehydrated in the skin after, So it was, you know, not necessarily what goes up must come down, but kind of what goes up must come down. So I was cautious about how I worked with it, and I worked with it in a very focused way. And it was beautiful, absolutely. I mean, the one thing I'd say is I could run across my land here where there's, like, notorious spikes and things. I would never spike my foot. You know, I was so sort of light-footed, whizzing around the land and... But it gave me a thirst, I'm going to say, to go in even deeper. And that's what brought me to Ayahuasca, who I worked with for a while. And my experience with the two were very different. I would say that psilocybin, the ego, was gone very quickly, and so much so that my sort of human body would have its hand up, sort of like, man, I need to do a wee. But in my kind of higher aspect, let's say, just wait wait a minute wait a minute come on we've got to and um and and ayahuasca there was more of a battle with the ego I'm going to say and before we opened here we touched on the sort of darkness and all of that yeah it dragged me my whole relationship with ayahuasca which um which I haven't I haven't worked with her for ten years in a in a consumption way but I've worked with her in the way that I now work And yeah, man, she took me through it all. And my time in the Amazon, as much as it was a beautiful setting, was a very brutal experience. And so one gets a deeper sense of the world from the darker spectrum, I'm going to say. And within that, I'm going to say experiences that we've had on whether one wants to say ancestral experiences that have fed into us here and now, whether one wants to talk about other lives and what we might have got up to in those times. But a real sense of housecleaning, I'm going to say, in working through those things and understanding why they played themselves out and the state of mind perhaps during those experiences that prevented them just flowing easily through us and somehow got trapped up in our cellular memory. And so I did a lot of work. So I spent ten years doing incredible deep end work that finished with Eyewash in two thousand fifteen and started with only working with nature in a very, very different way that required no consumption whatsoever and didn't even require access to the physical thing itself. I had worked with it in spirit and learned from it in the same way. But to begin with, after my daughter was born and my, my wife and my daughter would go and have their sort of afternoon sleep, I would race out onto the land. I'd be like, who is it then? I would be like, and things would be popping up because that's how this works. New things would be growing on the land. I'd be like, who are you? So I'd be running over. Right. And I'd learn their stories. And, um, And at a certain point, the mind has quite a control over the human experience here. And at a certain point, something needs to put it in its place. And as much as plant medicines will temporarily do that, or will showcase the ego mind a certain way, something else needs to develop a counterbalancing strength, I'm going to say, that holds that mind, which sees its use, but sees its limitations and its backseat driving, as I like to say. And so in the way that I learned, I learned in such a way that the mind could not deny, The things that I were told had already been mentioned. People that had discovered species of plants had named them a certain name, and that name correlates to a whole story behind the plants. So you realize a deeper beauty to what's gone on in our world as well. And my heart got really, really strong. And I think that as much as... everyone talks about mental health at the moment. And I get it, I get it. And I understand, and we sort of emailed briefly about this, about the role of psychedelics. But one needs to look at the heart because it's that that needs to come more alive in the majority of people because that's kind of a truer state of humanity as well. So it's one thing to be calm in mind and to be going through this experience. It's another thing to be truly alive and awake in this experience, in the mysteries and the miseries of it. Yeah, that's really well said. The mysteries and the miseries of it and the way in which you become aware of your surroundings. I'm fascinated, and I want to go back just for a moment to learning from your environment. When you talk about racing out onto the land and being like, who's next? Who are you? One who may not really... it's an interesting concept to say that you talk to plants. Some people look at that and like, what are you talking about, man? You're just out there talking to the tree. What kind of a lunatic are you, man? You know, like, but, but I was hopeful that you could explain to some people what it's like to maybe not, But to listen to the environment. And how do you learn from that? One example that I give sometimes for me is I've spent a lot of time in some altered states. And I remember one time sitting out on this patio. And I had this beautiful afternoon to myself. And the sun was setting. And I remember looking at this vine that was climbing up this tree. And it had produced a flower. And I'm like, how? How? much divine intelligence is there? How does that vine know to climb up this particular tree on this particular Wednesday and release that flower at like three thirty three at a forty two degree angle towards the sun, you know, on June twenty nine? How does it know how to do that? Like and that was a conversation that I had with nature and I was like, Oh, I see. And I got back to this idea of ecosystems and a plan and a knowing and a divine intelligence. And then I was able to apply that to my life. So while it wasn't a real I'm talking back and forth to the conversation, there was a real exchange of information happening on some level. And you could begin to see that exchange happening more and more the more attuned you come to it. But I was hopeful that maybe you could give us some stories about that. What is it like to be in communion with nature? How do you learn? What is this information exchange? And can you share maybe an information exchange you've gotten in one of these situations? I mean, I'm going to start this by saying I think it's one of the most important things that humanity should move back to doing. But this is innate human capability. And in a world that's become so disassociated and in a world that's become... so separate, and in a world where there's, in the majority of people, very little sparkling back in the eyes. I'd love to see it fill school curriculums, and I'd love to see it become more of a normality, and perhaps other things shift into being more of an abnormality in our world. I mean, where do we go with this? I'm sure, first of all, there's people doing this, and it's becoming more and more acknowledged. And I might say this is the beginning of what can be a very long, beautiful journey, because this is just the appetite there. I think the first thing you need to do is know how to go to your heart. And if you don't know how to do that, it's OK. You can start that process. I mean, one gets their heart by falling in love, no? And it should be remarkably easy to fall in love when you go into nature. And like you said, they're into flowers and see the degree of geometry and what's gone into the making of that. Because that's a divine architect, if you ask me. And so when you stare into these flowers, It's very easy to just fall in love, I'd say. And at that point, you're in. You've dropped out of a separate self and you've dropped into a more wholeness state. And in that place, you can be informed in a magnitude of ways. And I'd say that some people have, within the range of sensory capabilities, they might have their go-to. Some people have a smell. And the smell, just through a smell, they can move off into all kinds of environments and experiences they've been in before. that will bring what that is to life. So from a medicinal sense, if you go into sort of origins of herbalism, this is what was done. In homeopathy, there's a similar thing, a sensing of something that goes on. And so it's understanding your dominant sense and working on the range of senses as well and understanding that Number one, life loves that you're doing this. Nature loves that you're doing this. Your higher self loves that you're doing this. So everything is there supporting this at that point. They're like, yes. So everything that's happening in nature is this sort of grand theater for that moment, showing like, yes, yes, yes, yes. And so whether it's the bird that's up there calling, I mean, let's try and see if I can do some examples, yeah? Yeah. So early on in my experience, I was staring into, it was primrose, I think it was, the flower, primula. And I was staring in there and I was seeing the kind of fairy form behind it. And then there was a pigeon up in the tree. And the pigeon, it was a wood pigeon. It had its like breasts pushed out. It was doing its boop, boop, boop. And that's why that, so then you sort of move into the pigeon, your sort of consciousness moved out of like head into pigeon, and the pigeon is very, it's content, it's singing away, its belly, because it's puffed out, its belly's full, and it's kind of in the moment. And so that's reflecting a medicinal form of, you know, what it is I was communing with. After that, and then there's a number of other things that went on within that. But after that, you kind of go in, I'm going to say, call it a daydream. You daydream with it. at that point I was shown all these other aspects to it which is a fiery aspect of like let's go and and one learns that the fire has to be fed yeah and so you get fiery people that burn out pretty quick and you get fiery people um maybe jane goodall's a good example of this because I know I I spoke with some of her people and they're like man we just can't keep up with the woman But she never stops. So someone like that, she's got the fires being fed. It's being fed, and she's going. And so Primrose was offering medicine in that form, the fiery people that need the fire to be fed. And so it reveals it. It reveals itself. And then if you go, because I knew nothing about herbs. I knew nothing about, I love nature and the flowers, but I never studied it. So then after that, I would be like, what have other people said about this? And you look into sort of herbal remedies or you look into homeopathic or you look into. And there and there it is. Everyone's like, this is what it's used for. It's like, OK, of course. So you've learned inside of yourself already. And when people used to point to, you know, prior to pharmacy, this is this is what was going on. And there's. something that's gone on in this pharmaceutical process has disempowered people's innate ability to know exactly what to take and when to take it and and to self-heal, I'm going to say, within that environment. They've sort of given away their power to a greater body to treat them. And then we could go whiz off into that. But I like to bring it back to its pure source sense, which then... moves way beyond physical to understand you don't even need to consume it to bring the medicine in, and that's what my work is. You just move the spirit of that thing in, and it's doing exactly the same because we are energy and everything is energetics. So it denies the need for an external tool or consumption as well at a certain point in the journey. Yeah, it's beautiful. You know, it's interesting that we bring up the medicine in some ways. I was recently speaking with a friend of mine who was a pharmacist and much like My story about coming to a point in life where you can't do things anymore. This gentleman was in a situation that had a great job. They were crushing. There was something wrong and they've just felt it. They themselves were on SSRIs and, you know, they were living this life and they went down and they've had a series of journeys. And I had a conversation with the guy a while back and he's like, I just can't do it anymore, George. I'm prescribing all these pills to people and I know I've taken a lot of them. They just don't serve me. And I can't, after going through this journey and awakening, he called it on some level. He couldn't, he couldn't, Dole out the pills anymore. He quit his job. You know, this guy was, went to school to be a pharmacist. And all of a sudden he's like, I can't do it anymore. I just can't like people come in and I see him. They're like addicted, George. And he goes, I am the person that has given him the pills, man. Like I can't do it. And when I started, it's tough as that is tough as it was to see the surprise, the fear, the, the, the, New relationship with uncertainty beginning to emerge in himself. Like you can see it in people's eyes. Like what am I going to do? You know, like I got to feel like it's a huge win. Like I feel like people are coming attuned to this idea of like, man, I can't do this anymore. What am I doing with my life? And what you described about going down and being in tune with the nature, not necessarily needing a substance to do it, but to, you know, to have a, life tell you that it loves what you're doing. Like that feeling is something that heals everybody. And I'm wondering if you could speak to a little bit of the healing nature of nature. Like, you know, once you begin to heal yourself, you said early on in the conversation, those people that want to change the world are usually going to start by changing themselves on some level. But we could talk about that a little bit. How do you see, is this a wave of change that's happening? Has it always been happening? Or is it like a fourth wave of psychedelics? I know that's a big question with a lot of doors right there, but feel free to take it in any direction you want to. I think at a certain point, humanity is following a natural path that's pre-written and meets with cycles. And so we're theatrically playing it out with the good guys and the bad guys. And I think the last five years have been insightful for a lot of people. And I think that's pushed it a bit in more this direction of stepping out from it. If we're going to talk about the pharmaceutical industry and about doctors, then we have to go into malpractice insurance. We have to go into the procedures of the books. In one way, you don't have a choice. Do it and follow that, or you're right, step out of it. And the question is, those that step out of it, what can and should be done? And And we move into a sense of proving and prove it. That's what loads of people say, prove it to me. And I'm probably not answering your question. I don't remember your question now, but prove it to me. And no. no number one what I do is not not to be proven it's to be felt and at a certain point the thing the thing within you that was asked that was so skeptical that was asking for something to be proven fades away because there's something else far more powerful that steps forward which is has felt something and we know that it's experience that changes people and um in all manners of experience, whether they be horrendous experiences or beautiful experiences. So we need to move out of the proving. We need to move out of the labels behind people's names because they're just not important in my line of work, in the way that I embrace life. And we need to move into feel it. Come and feel it. If you don't feel anything, that's okay. Try again. Okay, try again. And there's a persistence to this feeling. And life's also, whilst life kind of, loves this and loves you doesn't mean it's going to make it easy because it wants that sort of it wants that faith actually it wants that faith and and improving is not faith um faith is irrelevant to what you're being told, irrelevant to what you're seeing, to move beyond that into something else. That's what we need to encourage in humanity at the moment. Faith, and faith itself as a word is being kind of skewed through religion as well, but we need to move beyond that as a... as a um a definition how we might see that defined into the purity of what what faith is because there's a veil for a reason man you know there didn't need to be but there is and the veil is that you you you trust surrender and kind of drop into faith to to fall to the other side of that and that's where the that's where the party's happening george yeah it is I heard a great quote one time and i Apologize for not knowing the author of the quote, but it was something along the lines of, it's the ultimate act of faith to believe you can do what you love. That one has served me really well. It is. It's a wonderful path. Can you do this thing that you love regardless of... of the distractions happening around you you know it's it's it's sort of like a psychedelic trip in itself like don't there there can be death by distraction you know or death by astonishment like oh look at this look at that look at this look at that you know but if you could just close your eyes and stay on the path you can probably get a lot of work done what what comes to your mind when I say faith in medicine Okay, so beyond realms of plants and natures and energies, one learns that some things in nature are manifestations of... of divinity behind them. So some trees will bring you to God. Some flowers will bring you to ascended masters and all of that. So I might say within my journey, you learn from the masters. And there was a stage in this ride where I wanted to go and sit with the physical masters. I'd be like, man, show me some stuff. Life was like, no way, man. You're going to sit with the masters, but not here. And you're going to learn from them. So if you want to talk about faith in medicine, you need to go to Asclepius. Now Asclepius was the god of medicine. And if you go to Asclepius and learn from Asclepius, if you're lucky you'll understand the strength of healing and the profoundity of it the as the greek mythology goes because I I worked with asclepius and there's a podcast for it as well because you and we worked with asclepius and I brought in this snake as well because the step is temples were filled with the snakes who would who were part of the cure as well and um So in that, I experience the fullest degree of healing energy. So I know what's possible in our world. But one has to move into the, do you know about the rod of Asclepius? Do you know, not many people know about Asclepius. It's a name that should... Well, I'm going to say this. Not many people know the name, but the rod of Asclepius plays its way through the logo of many doctor, medicinal, like... Is that like Caduceus? The snake's crawling? Okay. But it's a single snake. Now, I might say... And here you move into the oath of medicine and that doctors make. And when I worked, there's a bit of punch to that as a podcast, because there was, there was some anger on my side. There was an anger is fire. Yeah. And, um, And anger's not a bad thing. You brought up anger before. Anger's not a bad thing because it helps to re-establish boundaries. And the force of fire, well, we see it playing out at the moment all around the world. When it runs wild, when it's an aggressive form, it's too much. But when it's a boundary form that pushes back, it's good. I might say that there was something that went on there at the time with the oaths that people have made to the gods, actually, because they have oaths to the gods that they made. And the violation of those oaths and the mistruths that have come out of those oaths, I think there's... I mean, we're going to go in a slippery direction. I'm going to try and avoid doing this. But I think one needs to be true to their word to be true to themself. You know, it's the four agreements, isn't it? It's in there. And I think I know personal stories that sit within the medicinal world that aren't in truth, that are far from truth. And that impacts the field of healing that sits within it. It's not in accordance with it. So I think faith in medicine relies medicine to return to truth, is what I would say. Where do we go from here, George? Yeah, well, I guess a segue here is this fourth wave we're in. I can't help but see the paradox between the student will find the teacher that's right for them or the teacher will, you know, the, the, there, there seems like there's so much out there right now, especially in this wave of psychedelics, whether it's the McDonald's of transformation, you know, where you can get your certification and a chocolate shake and, and this over here, or, you know, you can, there, there just seems like this paradox happening, but on some level, do the, Maybe that's what's needed. You know what I mean? That's kind of a weird paradox, right? There's people out there that are really fraudulent that don't have truth in medicine, that are out there just trying to make some money to do some things. And Dennis Walker does a great skit on the commercialization of psychedelics. But maybe that's necessary on some level. You know what I mean by that? Maybe we have to see that in order to take it seriously. Maybe there has to be that out there. I guess that's interesting. When we talk about truth, how can you actually live the truth or see the truth without seeing the lies? Don't you have to see the lies? Don't you have to see the corruption before you can see the truth? You know, there's a saying, you can learn life the easy way or you can learn it the hard way. And, you know, as you say, George, there are people here on Earth that could help create some beautiful systems. Yeah. that are not at the dinner table. And I've met some of them. And they're exceptional people. I might also say that there's people in our world that are holding our world in balance so that this whole play that plays out, they're trying to regulate it in the unseen as things sort of topple out. So there's loads of things going on there. If you ask me, the first thing is, we're talking about the sacred here. These things can bring you to the sacred. And the sacred needs to be handled with purity, with honesty, with integrity. And the commercialization that's going on, I think might have, I think it might be driven by money. And I don't want to say that money's dirty, but I'm going to say that if a principal aim is to make money, a bit like the B Corps, isn't it? You're meant to like redo things now. So you're prioritizing something greater. um I mean that should that should sit there as a fundamental point behind it the thing that my work shows and I'm going to give an example here because um because I'm working in a in a place and from a state that's not only impossible to most people but it's absurd to most people and um and yet incredible things can be done from there george so to highlight my point I, through a connection, I connected with indigenous Brazilians, the Huni Kuin tribe. And I asked if I could move one of their own medicines into them from another continent and for them to share their experience. And they were like, yeah, let's do it. And so I moved ayahuasca. into them over a period of three days. And I would say I channeled. I'll use the word channeled, but I don't like what's been done to that as a word. But I channeled with integrity the spirit of Ayahuasca and the things that feed into them. And then after three days, we did a very concentrated meditation where I also brought in the whole tribal leader as well. And then they shared, and they shared in a video. they spoke about the integrity of how they received it how what was spoken to them in dream and and um and the and they touched on something very interesting and they said People are all over the world now, but so few people are truly connected, are connected with true humanity. They're not there. You can't find a lot of people in the world in the human species place. They've sort of, they've gone off piece, George. And so we can talk about that. But my point is, that's ridiculous to move Ayahuasca in that way with no consumption, without having met people and being in a different continent. That's absurd. And so when we talk about this sort of lunacy, there's a quote from Carl Jung. He said, tell me a sane man and I'll heal him. Something like that. And I was like, Carl, brilliant. Absolutely. Because there's a fine line between sanity and insanity. And what seems like sanity in our world is insanity. And what seems like insanity is sanity. That's how I got twisted right now. I can't remember what your question was. No, it's brilliant. It's brilliant. Oh, yeah, back to the psychedelics. Right. So I also work with Cambo in my way. I've never ever had... I've never met the frog in physicality. I've never had the medicine put on me, but I was able to move into the medicine of Cambo and I was able to understand the nuances into why that comes to be. And I wouldn't be a Cambo practitioner. That's not my calling. But I might say if someone's going to be a practitioner of cambo, they should be so intimately connected with the spirit of cambo to do so. They should not do a three-day training course and go off and do it. And cambo is a great example because it became commercialized. And I don't know if you know about the sort of agricultural nature of the frog then. Because in the human makeup, they're like, man, there's money to be made here. Let's start farming them. And then you can see, honestly, George, they've put cocktail sticks up their nose to try and get them, and they stretch them out to get them to secrete their poison. And everyone in the sort of West's paying their, I don't know how much money you pay for a Cambo thing. And they're doing those sort of photos for Instagram. And they're like, they've got someone that's done three days doing it. That's nonsense to me. You're working with a sacred compound. The Huni Queen, were given the song from the frog. They sing the song and the frog comes down to them and it gives its poison to them. They are two very different worlds. Psychedelics, we've got to touch on the synthetic development of psychedelics. And I might say from conversations with people in the industry, by people funding these clinical trials, by people conducting these clinical trials, George, they're saying that natural is the same as synthetic. They are one in the same. In fact, synthetic is better because you can deliver the right dosage. And I say no. I say no, George. And since you mentioned Hawaii, I'm going to give an example that I gave to a professor in the UK about this. I said this. They're not the same. He said, we've done trials. We've done studies. When we asked people to mark on a scale, the mystical quality, they gave a natural eighty two and they gave the synthetic eighty two. They are one in the same. And I said, I won't mention names here, but I said, let me give an example. Two different people go to Hawaii. This was my exact example. people go to hawaii one goes to a five-star hotel and stays there by the swimming pool drinking cocktails the other person goes to native hawaiians learns a rain dance They both come home. They've both been to Hawaii, George, both of them. But they've got very different stories to tell from it. So I might say the natural compound has a spiritual guide with it. The synthetic has lost that. And if you're doing that synthetic compound with a guide that has not done the work, you're not going to great places. So I'm not saying that we shouldn't do synthetic. I'm saying that if you're going to do that, there needs to be more magic in the room. And I don't think there is at the moment, and that's my deep concern. And if we're going to do natural, don't get me wrong, because I get the benefits of synthetic, that we're doing what humans do, we're over-extracting from the world, the cambo frogs, ayahuasca being cultivated rather than wild grown now, and all the other things, you know. we've got to find solutions to it I guess I'm a reasonable man but but let's not say that let's not say they're the same and I might say I offered my services here to go hang on a second Maybe we should bring in a third thing. You've got the natural, you've got the synthetic, and then you've got the spiritual deliverance of the same. Let's get people to talk about that as well. But that's too far-fetched. That's not proven in our world, George. So that's where we're at. And in time, that will move. And in time, what seems abnormal will become more normal again. It will just have to, because that's the way the cycles of the world are going to work. Yeah, the idea of prove it and the idea of clinical trials is so messy, you know, and it's... Like there's no way people never measure the observer. Like how about the person there that's observing you in this particular altered state? Like what's going on with the chemical communication between you and the team of observers that are trying to desperately figure out how to, you know, understand the mystical experience in your neck. There's so many variables in a trial that go unmeasured. You know, the ineffable, particularly the relationship to not only the observers in the room, but the actual room that you're in. We start talking about set and setting, and so much gets lost there. Like, you know, it blows my mind to see and to hear about some of these clinical trials. Yeah. You know, when I look at maybe like the maps or some of the Lycos trials or some of these other trials where you saw some misconduct between the individual and the person administering the medication, the sacrament. I just feel like on some level, science is still so juvenile. It just fails to... You can't quantify everything, Andy. There's too many variables. You can't know, but yet we desperately try to know, and it's in that desperate trying to prove to ourselves this works that we lose everything. you're focused on the finger instead of the moon. You know what I mean? Like it's pointing to the moon and like, look at the finger though. Like look at that part. Sure. It's interesting to me, but I, I do see some much like you said, I, I'm hopeful that we see science and spirituality move together like a double helix and they're starting to come together in some ways because, you know, there are some incredible things that may be able to happen with four ACO DMT or some of these analogs that maybe it may not be as sacred, but maybe it's not as profane either. You know what I mean? Like there are routes for these particular substances can be done, but it does seem like when you, when you try to, uh, do it for the intention of making money. When you do this clinical trial so that you can patent this thing, you're no longer studying or you're no longer looking for the profound effects of healing. You're looking for the profound effects of profit. And those are two different kinds of things. You know what I mean? I do. And the, the universities doing the clinical trials need the funding money to come in. Yeah. It's, So it needs something to break free from all of that. It needs some kind of. Yeah. And you mentioned the word intention and intentions kind of like key, you know, key to life. I'm having to learn Spanish because I'm just going off to the Sierra again. And intento is uh to try huh we need to do more than try though we need to do like a real directed concerted effort yeah and it and it should be I mean, put it this way. As it stands, humanity is in for some serious sort of slaps around the face. And like I said, you can learn the easy way or you can learn the hard way. And humanity is going the hard way at the moment. And yeah, nature can recover. Humans are, you know, mosquito on the back, kind of. That's all they can be, sort of. And that would be unfortunate. That would be hugely unfortunate. And to call myself human, to be part of that sort of theatrical play, I'm embarrassed, to be honest, because I think we're capable of so much more. The intention should be what? It should be reclaiming true humanity, reclaiming a fully healed state of being, given that inspiration has more or less the word spirit in it, and creating things from that place. If we want to be creating more benevolent, beautiful, and whole expressions here, then we need to sort of raise our consciousness as well. And many of these things are being developed from a lower sense of consciousness because, again, materialistic sort of greed, money making, competition, patenting, and all of that, it needs to sit in another sort of paradigm, I'm going to say. Those are my thoughts. This is something I've learned from deep curiosity, I'm going to say. Trying to comprehend why does that happen in our world? Why? And what's gone on in the process of that? you know taking taking place why is that center stage now why are the the most authentic beautiful people never heard or nor seen and um why do they have to struggle to the degrees that they do from the way in which they're working they should be nurtured and supported by the sort of human platform and they're often they're often not it's really interesting to observe it it's um to accept that's the time we're in, to appreciate that's the time we're in, but to nevertheless feel it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it makes me feel that much like the secrets that are revealed to you are for you to implement into your life. it just seems so fractal to me on some level. Like, you know what I mean? Like when you, when you, when you find yourself alone with nature, maybe in a different state of conscious, maybe not, but you get these rare insights that you're able to apply to your life to help you see the world differently. Those are not, something that usually are commercialized. Those are tools for you. And they're revealed to you at that time to make specific changes in your life to become the very best version of yourself. And it seems like that's the same thing that happens You know, when people bastardize that, maybe that's what Eliade is talking about between the sacred and the profane. Like here I'm giving you like the nature is giving you this tool. It's giving you this insight to apply to your life. And the first thing you want to do with it is how do I sell this to somebody? You know, it's it's such like a bastardization of it. And like that's what's been happening for so long. Like and I see it not only I see it in my life. Like I applied these strategies that society told me I should apply in my life and they didn't work. I mean, they worked to get me to a point where I could white knuckle through every day. But once you start realizing, like, maybe I'm using this thing wrong. Maybe I got this thing all wrong. And maybe I should not worry about trying to fit into the roles that society told me I need to fit in in order to feel successful. Maybe you should start trying to live that life that makes you feel good about yourself. Maybe you should try to do these things in life that bring that sparkle back to your eyes that you spoke about. Yeah. That, I think, is where psychedelics, plant medicine, community help us reimagine what's possible in life. And when each individual starts becoming the best version of themselves, society starts to fall into place. All this sort of corruptive nature falls by the wayside, like the detritus of a cocoon. This new form is emerging. I hope it's not too poetic to think that that's what we're moving into is this new form. I believe that. When I listen to you talk, Annie, and I read and watch some of the documentaries, I think you have this beautiful way of explaining what's happening. Do you feel like we're moving into this new form and the next generation is going to get a little bit more of it and the next generation is going to get a little bit more of it and we're slowly eating through the detritus of old ideas that no longer serve us? Yeah, it's a beautiful question. And it's also not so simple to answer in one way. Yeah, totally. Because, you know, even from the sort of spiritual place, there's riddles. And there's also like, this is a game. This is a game. So if everyone knew exactly what was going to happen, you know, then it loses the fun of it. And so I think... Some of us have certain, you know, some of us, myself included, have a certain clear idea of what starts to pan out. When I sit with the Oaxacos in Colombia and I speak with them, Their sense is we're near the end of the human chapter. And one has to understand there have been many human civilizations before this one. And this is what happens. They fall out of balance with the natural world and And so the people that point to all these things happening, the great flood, the polar shift, yeah, it's happened. You can go see it. And I've seen it very clearly where we've been before and what's happened during those times. So we're, on one level, we're on the edge of that again. It's looming. And so their sense would be we fall back into nature. And what I've been shown is something quite different. And the thing is, when you're shown things in this way, you can perceive it in many different ways, in the same way one can look at a painting. And we see different things from it. So when one's shown a scene, you can derive conclusions from it. You could be like, ah, okay, so this is playing out. The way that I would personally see it, since you asked, is that in this sort of, to come back to your analogy, this cocoon process of like pushing out through it, some things don't push out through it. They get stuck in it. They get all like twisted up and mangled. I mean, the way that I perceive it is this. for humanity to step into its next form, it's got to be readily available in its individual form to step into its greater form. And I started to feel that in the same way the Huni Kuin made note of the idea that not many people are really connected to true humanity anymore. I might say that the people connected to true humanity evolve from the cocoon into this greater form, if you want to call it that, a new form. And some might not, because they didn't make the grade. And if we go back to this game of life, it's that. And that might just be a story in the grand story of the stories. And that's OK. Isn't that a beautiful thing to reach for as well? What is true humanity? How does one attain true humanity? What does that even mean? But it's a noble pursuit, I would say. So whether it's right or wrong, whether it's the carrot on the end of the stick, that's a juicy carrot. So that's my take. I think as time goes by, the gap, between true humanity and many other people is getting wider and wider and wider. That's what I see. And one of the sort of blessings and curses that comes with awakening greater degrees of sensitivity, one sees a lot. So one sees in eyes, one sees who's home and who's not home. And I'd like to see more people home because it gets... It gets a bit tiring, I have to say, dumbing down a story to an acceptable level, not being able to shine one's light and all the other things. And that's why I enjoyed being in the Sierra, because I could just be who I am around people that know exactly the same. who have had the same stories from the plants and the trees, who know how the elements conduct themselves in their world and all the other things. So I'd love, selfishly, I'd love to see more people in that place. It would make life a little bit more fun here. But, yeah. On some level, like, I feel like we... I feel like we're getting to see... whispers of the elusinian mysteries on a global scale you know when you talk like if I just look if I use you as an example you know you could make the case that you know you're at times like when you go and you sit down with these people you've been invited to these particular places this ceremony this rite of passage if you will and it's almost like you're getting to see the the rape of persephone happen on stage you know at this elusinian mysteries and then you're coming back like coetzoe coddle with his bag and Handed a few things to some people, you know, and, you know, when I look at the world like that, it brings me a lot of hope, you know, because there's no real way to commercialize it and have that message stay with us. What's your time? I know we spoke a little bit earlier about like mythologies and some of the studies that you've done there, but, you know. Is it possible to bring back large-scale rites of passage? Or maybe we're in one right now with these Eleusinian mysteries. Everything. Everything is possible. Even the sort of... full ascension of humanity is possible on some level. I mean, I think it's important to point to something. I'm going to point to a message from the Kogis, who are one of the other indigenous tribes in the Sierra. And they put out, it's on YouTube, it's called Message from Mother. And it was a film put together to showcase their message for humanity. And within that, they said, either we all do the work or you give us what we need and we'll do the work. And I'm playing both lines. um I'm trying to move that get more people doing the work and to get more people doing the work it needs to show them that they have not done the work it needs to show them they think they've done the work but they're just sat in a layer and they once they break through from the layer the next round begins and so my work is that bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam um huge rapid evolution of self-work and we we touched on um darkness before and this sense of why why well why does winter come why do trees withdraw their energy into the soil and what is the darkness and what is the womb in the place of darkness and what can be what goes on in that place and Since we made mention to the Kogis, and I don't want to, I think it's important to note something here. It's beautiful for me with the tribal connections because they're pure and true. And the reason I'm able to sit with them is because they're masters at divinations. They can see the character behind the character. They won't look at me and the way I speak with language. They'll see something much, much deeper behind it. So the Kogis, I don't know if you know this, but And it might, it was certainly the whole, the way it used to be. And I don't know if things have changed a little bit. With the Ahuacos, it's changed a little bit. But to be a mammo, a spiritual leader of the Coghies, it's identified at birth. They know the child's been born and they come and they take the child and the mother up and bring them into a cave. And they spend, the mother's with the child for the first year and then the mother goes back down to the community. And that child spends nine years growing up in the darkness. so that they can learn to truly see. Now, if we're going to speak about darkness, we've got to speak about, and you mentioned rite of passage and initiation as well. They learn to see in the darkness and they learn to sense fully in the darkness. They learn how to enter the other world from the darkness. They learn the heartbeat of mother. and how to commune beautifully with her, all whilst they're being taught the full line of ancestral lineage secrets as well. So they're being like built up to there. After nine years, they're asked if they want to go back down to the community or if they want to do another nine years in the darkness. So some of the Kogi Mamos have spent eighteen years only in the darkness growing up. Now, if you want to ask anyone in the world, what do you see? Ask them because they've got exceptional sense. So when they give a message to humanity, It's not theatrical grandiose, it's from having matched their heartbeat to the beat of Mother Earth, to be so intimately entwined with her. And I don't say theirs is the fullest picture either, because they have their lens, they have their elemental direction, they have all the other things, but they know Mother Earth very, very well. What's my point here? We touched on darkness. And I'd like to give a really important example because no one seems to get this. So we've got opioid addiction in the world. When one goes and sits with and learns from opium poppy, and I'll give you an example. Opium poppies started growing outside my house, one. I did not plant it, but it started growing. And so I went to learn from it. And I'd already learned from poppy. And I learned the stories with poppies. I learned why. I don't know if you know the poem Flanders Fields, but basically, where all the soldiers' bodies were buried, poppy grew everywhere. If I was to talk about a top five sort of experience in speaking with nature, working with Poppy was one of them because As much as people might go, well, poppy grows when you've disturbed the soil. That's what happens. And they dug up this land and they put the soldiers' bodies in the land. So of course poppy's going to grow. No, categorically not. That might happen, yes. But poppy is an incredible, an opium poppy is an incredible medicine for grieving and for loss and sadness. and one can only connect and touch with grief and sadness and loss when they move into the darkness so so it is a rite of passage it is and and it's bloody hard work george and Life does that. And it brings us into this collective sadness because there's an awful lot of collective sadness. You mentioned anger before. Anger layers sadness. So in a certain way, the anger's all gone. You realize what was sitting underneath it. It was sadness. Sadness that you don't feel loved by life. It's the root of everything, I would say. So if we're going to look at opium addiction in our world, We need to look at the fact that lots of people aren't living the lives that they should be living, and lots of people have to go into the darkness within them of what's trapped them, what is not their true essence story and journey of life. It's going to resolve what's truly holding them back. In that place of grief, sadness, and loss, as one is in hysterical tears, they begin laughing. There's a cool podcast that I did working with Poppy. And so, I mean, to touch on the work that I do, in one way, we've not really done that. Nature comes to me, and she's like, we're going to work together in this way. And so I learn that. I don't query it. I'm not like, no, I can't be you. It's not right. I'm like, OK, what's sitting behind this? Who else is playing here? Because there's always divinity playing its way as well. So there's a character for it. I never studied mythology. I was taught mythology through spirit. So it just taught me the stories. And I came to understand that. So I worked with Poppy. And then there's been a group of people over the years that has got bigger and has got smaller and has expanded and contracted. And I say to people, right, I'm opening up a session. I don't say, who's joining? I say, who's joining? being it's already called them in. It's already working away. So stop for a moment in this sort of noisy life. Like, who's in it? And then people are like, man, I hadn't realized, but I'm in something. And the medicine will show itself in beautiful ways, not too dissimilar to the world of plant medicines, really. It's the same thing. And so the people start taking part. And I don't tell them what we're working with. And this is the really cool part. And I don't tell them what we're working with. Because otherwise the mind will run away with it. You've got to feel what's going on. You've got to sense what's going on. And if you need to know who it is, you'll be told who it is. So people will dream with this and they'll be like, they'll message me and they'll be like, it's this, isn't it? And I'm like, yes, it's that. Otherwise people go on the journey with it. And so there's a podcast, I'm trying to remember, it's a really cool name. It's got solace. It's like finding solace. You should listen to it. And it's And it's the story of Poppy. And I touched on Flanders Fields. So all these poppies starting growing because people are going to their dead husbands, to their dead sons who have been killed in another war because humanity couldn't find its way to resolving things amicably. And they went to cry at loss. And Poppy was like, I'll help you through this. And this is what nature does. This is what nature has always done. She's like, yeah, OK, guys, let's find our way through this. Get back up on your feet. Can we do things in a bit more of a beautiful way now, perhaps? So that is what went on with Poppy. And so I was shown, when I sat with Poppy, I was shown the sadness. And it's the sadness of being alive as well. Because you've come from this beautiful place. And then you're squeezed out into this world. Both my kids were home births. I helped deliver my kids. And I did that because I trusted life, that whatever was going to happen was going to happen. But I trusted it. And because I want my kids to be gracefully born into this world with few humans around, but we're really devoted to that moment and for them to find their way onto the mother's boob and to energetically feed that in such a wonderful way as well without fear mongering, lab coats and all the other things. And don't get me wrong, there's other stories and don't get me wrong, there's a hospital a long way away from here where I live as well. So that wouldn't have been good fun. But I trusted life in that moment. So it's sad to be alive. It just is. And it's sad to be alive because some people would say everything we're searching for, we left on the other side of the veil. That's the that's the irony, you know. So it's like, yes, you're meant to feel what you you didn't bring with you kind of as well. So. Opium addiction in our world, por favor, let us get through opium and poppy itself. Let's not run off to all the other sacred plant medicines to try and resolve it. They can resolve it, but let's work with where it began. So that's how I see it. Then the question is, what are the protocols for working with opium in that way? Don't know. Can't tell you that, George. I can tell you I can work with the spirit of opium and it will do wonderful things for people with sadness. It will hold the hand of people going through awful times as well. It will nudge them through and it will show them the light at the end of the tunnel that brings them out into the next part of the experience that feels more joyful. It will hold the torch for them whilst they're in that place, you know. So that's my take with opium in our world as it kind of runs wild and how people try to monetize the next movement, whether it's clinics, whether it's Iboga, which we know what it's done to the village communities in Africa that have worked with it for however long they've worked with it. You know that it's now denying them access to it because the price has gone up because Westerners want to buy it, you know. So let's try and keep things. Let's let's let's look at cause and effect and let's go back to, you know, cause. So opium is a poppy herself is a wonderful medicine for that is what I would say. Wow, it's so interesting to think about. First off, thanks for sharing that, like those are brilliant thoughts on working with poppy and understanding maybe our relationship to it and particularly taken back by the the pathway from grief to sadness and loss to laughter, you know, like it's so, it's so true. Like you just, sometimes like you just, you sit in the darkness long enough and you just start cracking up. Like, this is so funny if it wasn't so sad, but it's both at the same time. And it is, it is. Yeah. Happiness is found in sadness. Sadness is found in happiness. They're two sides of the same coin. For me, I mean, I've been long in the place where I'm sort of half here and half out of here, which I believe is the way we're meant to be. We're meant to be watching life from the edge of our seat, like watching a film. You're not meant to be like, oh, I'm not my character. You're meant to be in the character, be kind of embodied in the character, but have your other character present. So in these times where I was working through these layers of sadness, I'd be crying, but I'd be held in it by my highest. I'd be like, I know this is sad, man. Like, cry it. And it would feel great afterwards, you know. So you touched on something at the beginning as well. When you spoke about with psychedelics and you spoke about anger, you spoke about being weak. You were like, oh, why am I so weak? The question is, what is weak in our world? Because that has developed the wrong definitions around it. And to probably touch on that as well, this is an interesting one. So not too long ago, I worked with the wolf. So it's not just plants and trees, it's the animals and nature behind the animals as well. And working with the wolf, I understood you've got alpha male. And the term alpha male stemmed from watching wolves. I don't know if you know this. So someone studied wolves in captivity and they developed the idea of alpha males, that there's one male kind of like macho leader. He wrote a book and that became like, this is what wolves are. This is how wolf communities are. And then sometime later, he was studying wolves in the wild. And he was like, man, I got it wrong. I got it wrong because wolves practice alloparenting. That means that the male and the female share equal responsibility of the children. Now in the world that we've been brought up in as men, men go out to work and men do all of this and women look after children, it's nonsense. So a weak man, Where I live, you know, you've got the Manduka. There's other baby carriers out there. But, you know, guys these days, the cool guys, I'd say, are walking around. They've got the baby strapped to them in the sort of carrier that's got them against. And I watched the sort of older men look at me being like, oh god like like wet some like wet weak man it's like no it's the it's the opposite what is weak and what is strong because they've got twisted christian in our world a strong man knows how to cry you know a weak man forgot it maybe I don't know that's how I see things so in this sanity that's become insanity and insanity that's it's that as well it's like define it you know, because we should feel weak in moments and we should feel strong in moments. And we should cry when things affect us because otherwise we, we build up inside ourselves and we forget our ability to sense things anymore. Our sensitivity is gone. You know, we have to feel it. Yeah. It's a great point. It, It helps you to have empathy with everyone around you. We spoke about young earlier, and if you see everyone as a mirror, I know for me, in my weakest moments, I was given the gift to see the weak. For me, the weakness emerged from, I remember there was a guy at my work, and I would always make fun of him and say mean things to him, until one day, one of my friends pulled me aside and was like, hey, George, you're being a real asshole to this guy. And I was like, really? You think so? I thought I was just like busting his balls, man. I thought we were just kind of jiving. He goes, no, man, you took it too far. You keep taking too far. Why do you do that? And I'll never forget, like I came home and I thought about it. And like, as I thought about it longer and longer, the first question obviously was, am I being... an asshole to this person. And the answer was like, yes. Okay, good. I got it. Why? And then like the two answers came in succession. You don't like him cause he's weak. And I was like, no, no, you don't like him cause you're weak. And I realized everything that I thought about this person was something I thought about myself, but I was just projecting it onto that person, you know? And I was like, ah, I had to go and apologize. But it's in those moments of weakness or perceived weakness that maybe you're being shown a tool to make you a better person. Like that's worth crying over. You know what I mean? Like that's worth like. Oh my gosh, thank you. That was a really tough one to learn right there. But yeah, I think that those types of lessons in life are far removed from the classroom. Those type of lessons are far removed from at least the Western world where we have this giant book called the DSM where we just shove everything in there and pretend it's something else, man. It's crazy. But yeah, we can be vulnerable. Within the example you've given, I mean, it speaks to the quality that you're expressing in life as well, the character type that you are. And within that, there's kind of like super, super buzzy. It's fiery. It's interesting. It's like, wow, what's this? certain qualities come with that and there's a boundary that comes with that because it needs to learn what a boundary is as well because it's playful but in being playful it can overstep someone else's boundary and so the question is also What's the intention? Just having fun. Because if people take the piss out of me, I'm totally cool with it. But I've noticed that when you take the piss out of other people, some people can't take it. And I'm like, whoa, you know, what is that? It's boundaries. It's learning like one other fiery person that can have fun at their own expense and laugh at them falling over or whatever. And that's a person that's a bit more... you know, bounty. And one has to learn to know where we can express a certain quality of ourselves and when we need to sort of rein ourselves in as well. And that's all learning. That's all elemental playouts as well. It's super fascinating. It's like, who is this character I am inhabiting here? And how do I refine some of these edges? How do I learn to be this character in this world as well? And they're beautiful. So I also think we shouldn't be hard on ourselves because we're we're sort of reflecting this a nature to us as well you know and and we're learning how to um how to be that in the world and sometimes that takes time particularly with like you said the education that's gone on in our world it's um I you know in in one way we're a lot of the world's in its sort of infancy. I mean, look to our world stage and you'll see it's ridiculous that we have the world leaders that we have at the moment. How on earth? and I know um uh thingy pointing you know from the wisdom of trauma you know pointing he's like they're all traumatized yeah totally they haven't grown up and um we need to change that in our world as well huh we need some like true leaders that have done the work and and the whole political landscape needs to change because the people that sort of ascend in that sort of um What do you want to call it? Sector of life. Play those games. That's the game. That's the house of cards. So the whole leadership, so much needs to change in our world. It's like everything, actually. It's not just one thing. If we change that, then this will happen. And that's what life is. That's what life is doing. Life's going to change all of that. It's going to do everything it needs. And people are going to step up and do the thing that they're called to do, which is the mission that we have in life. And that's a really important part. that I often don't see acknowledged within psychedelics as well. Mental health, but it's like, why are you here? What have you got to do? What's your mission here? And how are you going to fulfill it? And the blankness, the emptiness that I see in a lot of people's eyes is they're not in their mission. And it's a really crucial thing that the Ahuacos talk about. I love this because I knew a long time ago what my mission is, and it's the same as theirs. And when I spoke at this conference back at the end of last year, it was all about nature and data and how essentially you know how starts to price nature so that we can conserve it and that's not my way but I like if you know I can dance like a dad at a school disco in that and I'll do it but I'll try and bring it around to a greater truth and I gave a message from the spiritual leader of the ahuacos to the to the room that was full of financial people for the most part And his message was more or less, every single thing in nature has a mission to fulfill. Let us help them fulfill their mission and let us help each other to fulfill our own missions too. It was more or less that. So most people look at that. Oh, and I followed that up, it's important to say, with the message that came from the Kogi as well. It's a really important message. And anyone that has greater degrees of sensitivity and connection with nature, they knew this for a long time. Global warming is not in nature. Global warming is only in humanity. And that seems preposterous for a lot of people. They can't quite fathom that. But I gave an example. And since we've made mention to the wolf, I think this is a good example. You talk about the wolf in Yellowstone Park. Do you know about this story? No, I don't know about it. Tell me. OK, so let's just say this. Yellowstone Park was like flourishing. Nature was alive. Everything was doing its thing. The high five of species and the chorus of nature, et cetera, et cetera. And humans decided the big bad wolf needed to go. You have to look at why. So you've got the sort of stories told about the wolf, the sort of evil force. You've got the sort of bloodthirst of humanity of like this sort of alpha predator and I'm going to sort of take them down kind of. And you've got ignorance of humanity. So in America, a lot of the majority of the wolves were killed off. I forget the exact figure, but something like eighty, ninety percent of them. In Yellowstone Park, they were killed in totality. They were exterminated. And the Yellowstone Park totally changed. And what happened was this. In no particular order, George. The elk and the deer became overpopulated because nothing was munching away on them anymore. At the same time, nothing was hunting them anymore. So they didn't have to move around the land. So they got lazy and kind of just ate stuff by the riverside. So they ate all the trees. The beavers were like, guys, I need the trees. I kind of munched them down. So the beavers left. There's no trees. I'm gone. The birds were like, we're out of here. And so this sort of wave of, can you say, succession of species just exiting, this place went from being this sort of biodiverse full expression of life to being deadened. And the rivers started moving, because the earth by the trees was no longer held together by the trees, so the water just pushed. And so all the rivers changed. The story goes, there was a beautiful title that someone came up with. It was something like, When Wolves Change Rivers. Something like that. And, and seventy years followed. And then, someone this is what I like to say someone took it upon themselves someone's mission was to get the wolf recognized endangered so someone took upon this mission and they got recognizers endangered at that point monetary funds became available to reintroduce the wolf So the next person took on a mission to go around and get together. I'm going to truck these walls from Canada back into the Yellowstone Park. And so they brought these walls. They probably went through all numbers of red tape, like shouting and meeting rooms. You know, God bless them to get the walls to Yellowstone Park. pretty quickly Yellowstone Park returned back to its full expression. The rivers moved back, the beavers came back, the birds came back, the eagles came back, the foxes, the badgers, life like returned back to its. When we say global warming, is not in nature. Global warming is only in humanity. That is an example. Humans, not understanding how nature works and the need for an apex predator, eliminated it and changed everything. And humans in our world have done the same pretty much everywhere. They've over-extracted and they've misunderstood nature because they're no longer connected with nature anymore. And so if we want to see our world turn around, it's not by making massive machines that we're going to fund that are going to draw carbon out of the atmosphere. It's certainly not by fighting climate change, the one thing that winds me up the most. It's not a fight. It's a comprehension. It's not standing. A fight doesn't really get us anywhere most of the time. It's an understanding. And to do that, you have to come to the understanding that you yourself were overheating. And why were you overheating? And so it takes one on a beautiful journey that brings one back to acidity in body where it should be more alkaline in form. How people are just stuck in the rat race and can't get out, overthinking and they're burning out and all the other things. And so to change all of that, you have to change the human experience and how we as humans live here. Beautiful journey. And that will change. Nature will be like, we'll just return the Yellowstone Park because we'll understand it. We'll understand we shouldn't take more than we need. Understand we shouldn't outsource production to countries that essentially use slave labor and produce cheap things that don't last very long, and all the other things that have played out. And it will all start to change. But we have to arrive at that point. We have to recognize that global warming is in humanity. And that's a hard one to get through to people, I have to say. In the room that I was in when I delivered that message, what followed with talkers, ooh, good grief, about genetic modification of nature to suit humanity and the way that we farm and all other things. back into fighting and investing into carbon extraction machines and things like that. So it's really quite simple. Life's always been quite simple, but we've made it immensely complicated, I think. Yeah, that's a brilliant thing for sharing that story. I was unaware of how taking a critical component out of balance changes the entire balance of everything you know because it's interconnected yeah it's it's and I mean an interview that I did not too long ago I I gave this wolf in yellowstone park as the example of the human being as well because um people have killed the wolf inside in some cases and And so we've killed off. Our ecosystem is not flourishing anymore. And of course, I don't know if humanity has been as sick as it is right now. And we should. With the way that one could look at it, they'd be like, man, you've got everything you need, guys. But it's like, no, you haven't. You haven't. You've... you're so lacking. There's the quote, you're so poor, all you have is your money. And it's kind of like that. So to bring human back into balance, you've got to bring the ecosystem back into balance. And to bring the ecosystem back into balance, you've got to recognize what's not in harmony. And to recognize what's not in harmony, you've got to deep dive into yourself to understand what's going on. It's dynamic. People can facilitate that work. What I do facilitates that work. But you don't escape doing the work. The work must be done. It's just a prerogative of life, I believe. So there's no magical shortcut. And one that I know, you are here to live. You are here to live life. And to live life, you must feel everything. That is what it is to be alive, I think. Not to escape, not to dissociate. but to return when you're ready back into all those things you are unable to live through and witness and feel and be open to, I guess, and to do them. And within my work, you mentioned allies before. Exceptional is the world of nature. We are nature, yes. All of nature is interconnected, yes. And that means we can draw on everything from nature in every single direction into us to recreate our own sort of ecosystem, to bring back harmony and biodiversity with an all possible, all beautiful, loads of support out there. It's all there, George. Yeah. Yeah, it's really well said. I... I'm hopeful that we can move into more of a balanced society. And yeah, I guess the same is true with rivers too. When you start speaking about the wolf in Yellowstone, what does a dammed up river do? It fundamentally changes everything below it, right? Like you've radically denied a large portion of nature's ecosystem by damming up this huge river. If we can see the Amazon as the lungs, shouldn't the rivers be like the bloodstream? Absolutely, and yet, the beaver does down the rivers, but the beavers, hasn't lost its connection with nature. So the beaver's working with nature on this. So then you're into the damming of rivers that then flood out sort of, what's the word, marshes, water, water plains, and all of that, where other life forms can then flourish again. So the beaver just knows its role in nature. But the thing is, the beaver, left to its own devices, will make lots of dams. And so you need something that's going to take the beaver out so it keeps it in check. And then you need something. And the analogy or the thing that I've given before is, do you know the nursery rhyme, there was an old lady who swallowed a fly? It's a little bit like that. And humanity's got to the fact that it swallowed a fly. Now it's about to swallow a horse. Because it's like, oh, we'll solve this. In Australia, they've done this in huge ways with species. But they brought the invasive species and they're like, right, bring another one to get that. And then, oh God, and they just magnify this problem. It's amazing. It's amazing. It is totally amazing. You've been incredibly gracious with your time, Andy. I have a few questions stacking up. Do you have time for a few questions? I do. And I'm sorry, I sort of hogged the microphone a little bit. Not at all. It's beautiful, man. I'm super thankful to get to hear not only some incredible stories, but you're a masterful storyteller. So thank you. And please feel free to, if something grabs your attention, feel free to. The first one comes to us from Clint Kyles here. He says, in the psychedelic state, many describe feeling a profound unity with nature. How might this perspective help us reshape our relationship with ecosystems like the Amazon? oh wow interesting um yeah total wholeness with nature and non-separation and then separation how the two play their functioning roles and in life because we also have our inner ecosystem yeah the amazon is is alive and that's where my my gift if you want to call it that opened up it was when I was in the amazon all of nature spoke through um yeah she's a masterpiece there and it's not only the the amazon the important thing to say there would be that the Amazon, you know, the life in the Amazon is fed from the cloud forests in like Ecuador. And so this is back into the interconnected nature because we, the Amazon becomes our sort of, I don't know, on the mantelpiece, kind of. But Amazon's fed from everywhere. Everything's feeding the water cycles there and the animals there. Yes, if we go back to, in answer to the question, if we go back to a full sense of connection with nature and we create from that place, beautiful things will be done in our world, I might say. It's the creation from separation that's caused some of the problems, in my humble opinion. Yeah, I agree. We got one from Desiree from Palm Desert. She says, can the karmic principle of cause and effect, which you champion, be seen as a universal law of nature that mirrors the feedback loops and psychedelic experiences? Oh, yeah. Thanks, Des. Yeah, this is good. I mean, karma is an interesting one in my opinion because I think in one way, I forget if it's the book, if it's the autobiography of the yogi, or if it's the living with the lay and masters. But towards the end of the book, from memory, it's been a long time since I read it, the guru's burning through the karma of his people there. And karma's an interesting one, because either it needs to play out in the outside world, or you go to it in the inside world. And I like to go to it in the inside world, so I have a more flourishing, beautiful outer experience. But you can go to it. You can go to it all. Why is this karmically playing out in my life? And what's the origin? Follow that thread to it and resolve it there. And that doesn't need to play out in life anymore. You've resolved it already. So I like to, if we're going to talk about doing the work, it's about going to all of these places, all of these little spots where we've not fully lived through an experience, where we've kind of held on too tight, or whether we didn't quite understand the... what's the word, the implication of what it is we were doing at the time. We hadn't the full consciousness to understand the cause and effect. We were, I don't know what the word is, Unaware, I'm going to say. And so to go in with greater awareness at this point to resolve it as well. I don't know if that makes sense, but that would be my response. Yeah, no, it's a good response. Sometimes it feels to me that life just keeps showing you these tests. And sometimes you have to pass this, like you have to keep facing the same thing until you pass the test. And then all of a sudden you're free to do the next test on some level. Like I... Do you ever feel that way or what's your thoughts on that? Yeah, but the thing is within that, there's layers to it as well. And so you're returned back to it. And it seems like the same thing again, playing out. But it's a deeper layer. It's a spiral to it. It's a deeper layer to it. And if that deeper layer had been on the outside, you wouldn't have done it. You know, I might say that a psychologist, a cognitive behavioral therapist, I know one very well. works with people with phobias. And so when someone came in with arachnophobia, they could see them for ten sessions, I'm going to say. So they had ten sessions to move that person from can't be anywhere near a spider into holding a spider. and if on session one they'd got a spider and gone there you go they would have now and run out that room and I'd say healing's a bit like that so it's like a sort of little stepping stones these baby steps up to that kind of you know um the next round but so it was kind of okay what what you do then it's like by session three I've got a a spider and a jam jar in the corner of the room session four they're reading a cartoon book about a spider you know I don't know down to session ten they're holding a spider and so healing healing's that it's like yes it's the same thing coming back again it's not it's not that you didn't necessarily get the learning it's that you're you're dealing with a deeper degree of that lesson I'm going to say and once you've passed through that you'll enter the next layer and at a certain point You don't even think about it anymore because it doesn't play its part. You've resolved it, but you didn't even understand you'd resolved it. It's just gone. It's nothing to you anymore. It's playing out, but it doesn't even feature on your radar. The question before was about psychedelics. And there was a part to it that might have touched on the idea of bad trips. I'm a very prevalent speaker in the psychedelic realm about bad trips. And I once asked them, what happened to the psychedelics? as opinionated as they are in this subject area. I might say there's no such thing as a bad trip. There's just a trip, you know. We shouldn't label it as that because you've perhaps gone into the horrors of your mind. And in some cases, sometimes in actual life, we're caught in a bad trip. There's something just so horrendous. There's no escape from it because we're too anchored to it. Whether it might be a toxic relationship, it might be keeping kids together in a family environment that's not working anymore. It might be having to keep the job down because you're the sole provider, whatever it is. You can also be stuck in a bad trip in life, but it's about resilience and working your way through it. Come out of the other side of the bad trip and you've learned whether it's mental resilience, you know, which is a great thing to have. Ultimately, this is horrendous, but I'm going to find my way through this and it will all be fine rather than kind of freaking out in that moment that that's it for life now, you know. So bad trips serve their place. They shouldn't be demonized in the way that they are. And someone that facilitates a space where a bad trip might reveal itself. The question is not that it should not have happened. The question is what you do during that moment and who you bring in to support that. moment believing someone to it might not be the right thing to do bring in supporting allies that can nurture them with sort of expertise in that very area is a is a wonderful thing to do in a sort of facilitated space so one must have the right connections in this in this realm to know who who to bring into the room to to help hold hand in that yeah it's a brilliant point it's it's There's nowhere to run in the midst of a deep psychological exploration that you can't get away from. Anybody who's tried, it's just futile. You're like, I don't want to think about that anymore. And it just pops up brighter and bigger. You're like, I don't want to think about it anymore. Until you're forced just to be like, okay, I guess I'll just sit here and hold this for a while. And it fades away. It's so much like life. It's just teaching you like, look, this is going to happen in real life. Let me show how your mind works. And if you see the inner workings, it's really helpful later in life to have those difficult experiences in your mind so that when you approach them in this realm, you know how to deal with them on some level. Yeah. yeah there's a degree of um I mean if we go into the sort of the tree of life idea there's a lot of everyone trying to go for the light um trying to be spiritual but again carl jung said it very well it was like more or less for every step to heaven you need to take a step down to hell so absolutely that is how it works you don't get the sort of glorious thing you don't hold maintain it unless you've you've done the you know the opposing So it means that the spiritual path is hardcore because it's a path that's going to get more and more challenging, but it's prepared you for every moment because you've dealt with a sort of lesser form of that already. So it's like, now you're ready for it. Come on. It's interesting to think about that particular individual of them. This one is, here we go from... This one comes from Bernie. Bernie says in your experience, transforming corporate boardrooms, what would happen if business adopted a psychedelic mindset of oneness and interdependence? Yeah, super. So There's two places going on here, because it's very easy to lose yourself in the oneness and that you're also here and serving a functioning role. It must it must that perspective must play its part in our world. It's not to imply that all CEOs should be microdosing. It's the idea that they should know that space. And I might say that in my work it's knowing every single space every single direction and fragment of direction or minuscule angle of direction to be able to comprehend it it all so psychedelics will can bring you to this you know wholeness state wonderful and then you you fall back into this sort of separate state as well and you've got to then try and see how to, I don't know, put together the pathway pieces to incorporate that. And the term would be embodiment. And I say that there's quite strong degrees of or quite lack of embodiment that goes on in our world within some of these areas as well. So it's like, yes, bring the trip home, integrate it kind of fully within you. step up into living it in more fuller form, but comprehend why the world might not be in that place at the moment and how you might sort of usher the world in that direction as well. Because there's reasons why we're not in for the most part. yeah you know um in in that state yes so okay total connection with nature beautiful we are nature absolutely interconnected nature yes okay how do we bring that into the boardroom um particularly with people that won't want to do those experiences But there's a certain temperament condition to people that, a certain courage as well, to people that step into that place. It's either courage because they just want to experience everything, or it's suffering, isn't it? They're like, this is horrible. Or, you know, how do I make this better? Like, I'll try anything. And so they find their way to it, and they realize that suffering was the whole sort of precursor to moving their way on the spiritual path, which is the kind of Buddha way, I guess. So, yeah, it's an important perspective and it's been a difficult one of mine because ultimately, you know, businesses, shareholders, boardrooms are trying to generate profits and often to do so, there's a trampling on the rest of the world and a sort of competitive nature and lowering of costs. And it's very difficult to align those two worlds, I think. I think it's... Yeah, it's reordering things a little bit. Money must be made. People must be. But if you're being a destructive tendency in the world, that's not success. I don't care what your balance sheet says. I don't care what your profit and loss said. It's not a success. And if you're a CEO supporting that, you're not a success. And the people that seem to – it's an amazing time, isn't it? The people that are celebrated for the most part in our world are on the polar side of that. How did this happen? If I look at the CEOs brought into these rooms, I'm horrified a little bit. So again, that will start to change. And the people who vote with their wallet in those directions. And with the coffee brand that I've created, it's proven that. It grew, the company I work for is two hundred and twenty three years old. They are a Belgium based company that is older than Belgium. So they predate Belgium as a country. And the Belgians can be very pragmatic and they can be quite conservative. And I brought something that was totally different and it moved forward. And it proved itself and it became close to, you know, fifty percent of all the coffee that they do that they arrived at from more than two hundred years of doing coffee. And so it shows how our world wants to support those things. And it shows how I have to say I'm not trying to sell coffee, but when people drink the coffee. They can't drink other coffee anymore. It's amazing. They're like. Some of the negative effects, the jittery effects, it's not dominant within it anymore. And there's something within the taste. And the taste is because there's just been such degrees of consciousness that have come to shaping it, doing amazing things. One of the reasons why I was with the indigenous people in the Sierra is is because I wanted their coffee to come into it. Because I was like, man, how can I? I got to the point where I can't talk about this stuff because I'm sort of a white boy with a British accent. So if I speak about it, everyone's like, oh, God, no, we're not here. So I'm like, why don't you go and sit with the big boys in the mountains then? And when I went with them and I showed them the Puro story, there's another film, I've not put it out there, But the leader, the leader of the Ahuacos said, it is as if we created it. These were his words. And he goes, let's work together to let people understand truly what nature is. Let us teach them nature through the coffee. It's been a really cool journey, but it showcases it. It showcases how our world wants to change. It showcases how it's doing some good. I'd like to do even more good. It's making profits and it's looking after shareholders, but it's created... Maybe you should put a link to the... So I don't have to explain it so people can watch a beautiful video that kind of showcases it. But it shows what's possible in our world. It shows our world wants it. It shows that businesses will allow it. And it shows that people will copy, imitate, and that our world will slowly move in that direction. And it showcases that in a world where there's big corporates who are greenwashing and doing horrendous things, there's corporates that are actually doing good things as well. And there's people like me working for them, as hard as it is at times. with my perspective on life. But nevertheless, here I am. Yeah, there's an interesting quote in a book called The Spectacle of Society. And in there, he talks about the end result of products and services that are created in misery is poverty. It just makes you think on some level. If a product or a service is being created through misery or drudgery, the end result by the consumer is going to be poverty. And it's a weird concept to think about, but what are your thoughts on that? It seems plausible to me. And if you take the opposite side, like fair trade coffee, look at the fruits that that is producing versus something that is a race to the bottom where the end result is not. Totally. Absolutely. I mean, look, just go and look at the world coffee price over the last twenty five. Don't look. Well, look at it now and see how expensive it is, because it's like cocoa. It's just gone absolutely bonkers, which creates new new stories, which which, by the way, turns the tables, I might say. But I'll come on to that in a moment, because I think it's a really cool thing to share. World coffee market has been remarkably successful at underpaying people below any form of living income, to the point they're making losses, but that's all they know how to do, and they continue to do it. And it's done that for more than half of the last twenty-five years. It's paid people below what they need to live. And so Fairtrade drew a minimum, there's a long story to Fairtrade and I won't go into it now, but they drew a minimum price point. And they were like, it doesn't matter what the guys in New York do. It doesn't matter what the guys in London do. You're always going to receive this as a minimum. If the market price goes over that, we'll give you that plus more. So it recognized what they needed to live, which was really important. You then have to look at the companies that are willing to pay for fair trade because a lot of them aren't. A lot of the tenders take place and they go after the price and the purchasing managers celebrate it because they saved the company another ten thousand or whatever. But they've just screwed the other side of the world. And there's a cause and effect that takes place with that. The other thing is, that's important for fair trade and organic as well, particularly with fair trade, because it basically pulls together, instead of taking one guy that's got this like monocultural massive industrial farm with machines like doing everything, it's put together a thousand families that have got a back garden, decides to plant coffee, and it brings them all in together. And it's not only this, but it's often this way. It's their back garden. It's their little piece of land. Number one, they can't afford to put chemicals down there. Number two, they don't need to put chemicals down there. And number three, why would they poison their own land that their kids run around on? So the other thing is the coffee that's grown there is grown in a different way. It's not monocultural or industrial. It's more in harmony with nature. And then what I try to do through moving money into nature reserves to protect the most biodiverse pieces of land in the world, is to counterbalance the fact that we've taken that land away from nature to farm it by giving her her space to be sort of wild in her true sort of authentic form so that that holds that in balance. And that's what's going on in our world. We've put things out of balance because of the way that we've done things. Nature never says you're not allowed to farm. Nature was just like, just don't destroy everything and plant one thing because that's not how nature works. So, of course, you're going to taste the fact that people have been paid fairly. Of course, you're going to taste the fact in the coffee that we've gone there, that some of them are our mates, that we created our own coffee farm there. Of course, they're going to taste that nature's like, man, you're doing these really cool things and no one else has thought about that. Of course, that's going to find its way in. And then you're back to intention, which we touched on before. And intention was to give back to nature because we take from nature. Of course, that's going to find its way through it all. And I might say it can go even further than that. And that's what I'm trying to work on. That's the next thing that I'll work on, a story that might never be told because it's too kind of sacred in its nature. But that's the next thing. coffee is a sacred plant coffee is a is a medicine as well and we forget that with the way that we consume it but if one kind of takes takes time and space for it a wonderful tool for creativity but it because but in in her spiritual form when one knows the spirit of coffee she she grounds you in the earth she knows how to protect you so the problem is when we're kind of in this expansive like buzzy state we leave ourselves quite vulnerable and we've pushed all our energy out so she teaches you how to be in that mode but being sort of grounded and also kind of protected in it So bring more of that into the world as well. So it kind of, all these sort of far-fetched ideas, it kind of grounds them a little bit more as well. That runs through kind of humanity as well. So coffee can, yeah, coffee can, cacao, we see in cacao ceremonies now, but coffee shares some similar attributes, actually. Yeah, I think one of the, active ingredients in a lot of ayahuasca bruises, psychotropia viridis, which is a form of coffee, right? Interesting to think about that family just has so much to give. Yeah, yeah. And if we're going to talk about... I recently wrote on something because I see people's use of tobacco in our world. Tobacco is bad. It's like, what? Tobacco is one of the most... In fact, if I was to call out five different things as remedies for humanity, tobacco would be one of them. It's not tobacco. It's the cigarette industry that's the problem. Those are wonderful things it plays its part in. Certainly ayahuasca ceremonies in the Amazon. And there's a dieter and purgative before and all things like that. I work with tobacco. I do a podcast with tobacco as well. Very, very powerful medicine. And very healing of the gut. And it's our gut instinct. And I think in that podcast I spoke about it. I spoke about it. It's interesting watching Meta today. It's the news that comes out about their fact checkers. Because I point to that. I was like... People no longer able to connect with gut instinct, that they have to rely on something outside to tell them whether something's true or false. So we have to heal our gut is a short answer to where I might have journeyed now. Gut instinct, immensely important. Yeah, in Hawaii, I had a really cool garden with so many cool plants. And I had a little row of... tobacco plants. And what people may not know is that you should be very careful walking through and brushing up against your tobacco plants if they're wet. I remember I did it a couple of times. I was out there and I was like, wow, these things are really coming up good. And it was like this fresh dew. And I had brushed across them a couple of times. And then all of a sudden, just boom, my head, my body lay down, man. It really is powerful. I wondered where we were going to go here, George. I thought this was you back from the ocean in your Speedos brushing past them. It was a rough day. It was a rough day. Never forget that one. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's, it's amazing how many plants are out there that are just. Yeah. All of them. Yeah. Nicotine too. Nah, it's like, and, and how many of them tell a similar story and continue the same thing as well. And, and, you know, the other thing we've done is, for the most part, I speak for Europe is we've raced to other continents to be like, man, save us with your medicines. But the medicine you need is always under your feet. And we've got very powerful plants everywhere in the world. It's just we don't know how to work with it. And I'm not one to say, like, here's the protocol for doing a sort of dieta with this tree here because I work with them in another way. Other people have put procedures together for doing dietas and probably have done it very well. But it's all there. And sometimes... you know what what humanity refers to as weeds as well it's like oh man no it's learn from weeds and you'll learn, you know, resilience and you'll learn tolerance and you'll learn just so many different principles. But you'll also learn why that thing keeps coming back in your garden as well. So rather than like ripping it out, go, who is this? What is this? What's behind this? And a big one in Europe is dandelion. Do you have dandelion? Yeah. Yeah. incredible medicine, incredible medicine. So as much as people point at psychedelics and it's like, yes, okay, for the beginner, And then after that, you go and find the same thing elsewhere in nature through other things. So dandelion does some very special things to the mind. It's like this air quality. And when you blow it, seeds and these seeds do that. It works. It works the liver. It works through these sort of anger layers. It works through boundaries, but it pulls up into this like fresh air, like clean mind state. So dandelions got medicine in it as well. Incredible medicine. But how many people really recognize that? Not too many. There's a bit of like liver tonics done in herbalism. Exceptional medicine. Oak, exceptional medicine. Hawthorn medicine. And then there's who you are, who you're embodying as a character, who you are in your other character form and what medicine resonates with you in another way as well. It's like sometimes you connect with something in nature and your home. And you're like, because it's got what you lost. It got what you might not ever be able to claim, or it's got what you might eventually claim. And it shows you it. And you're like, oh, that feels so good. Put that into words. You can't, you just, you just can't, but it's, I mentioned the carrot on the end of the stick. It's like, what keeps you going on this journey? It's like, that was too good. Nothing else touches that. I'm going, I'm going for it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. There's, It's so fascinating to me to think about what is possible if we're just willing to be aware of the possibilities out there. It's, it's bold and beautiful and, and yet admire our conversation. This is so much fun. It's, it's always fascinating to me to get to talk to people and feel as if not only did our conversation fly by like in a, what felt like a few minutes, but I feel like we could have a lot more awesome conversations in the future. But as we're landing the plane right here, I was curious if you would be so kind as to tell people what you have coming up, where they can find you and what you're excited about. Okay. So let's start with this. I do a podcast. It's called The Language of Nature. It's on all the kind of podcasty channels. It's inherently difficult to speak about this work. So I speak through poetry, which is a language of the heart for me. And it's medicine in the podcast. So if anyone's going to listen to a podcast, When I started off, you'll see a difference at the beginning and how it is now. I've kind of become more masterful at it, I'm going to say. And I also got a microphone before I was just using my iPhone and stuff. So the audio quality is different. But there's medicine within it. And in part of the riddles of how spirit informs earth experience, we must use riddles. So there's a lot in there hidden away in rhyming words that people of a certain readiness will receive and others might not yet, but if you come back to it, it's like reading a book. People say this about books, don't they? So there's a podcast called that because ultimately I have to express this. And that was one of the reasons I thought it would be cool for you and I to, to speak today, George, because I don't want to say it gets, it's not that it gets lonely because in the other world, it's so, so beautiful. I'm it's so accessible for me, but in this physical reality, it's so different doors open for me everywhere. They're here. They kind of slam in my face, but yeah, So the podcast is that. The website's plantly.com. It's been an interesting ride. It takes an awful lot of energy to channel this medicine. And it changes everything. It changes my family, my distant family. It changes the people taking part in it and every single person around them. And you witness the ripple effect. You witness that this, I spoke with Rupert Sheldrake earlier and I mentioned the hundred monkey theory, but then we, it was his, Oh, God, resonance, morphic resonance. It's about morphic resonance, yeah. I asked him to do an experiment with this, and he couldn't see how we'd do it. It's interesting how... Anyway, it doesn't matter. I won't go off on that now. The sessions, I don't know where they go. I can say I'm off to do some wonderful... incredible work that, like I said, humanity might not ever learn about here with the masters in the Sierra who asked me to come there. And I'll share this. I asked why. I said, why are you asking me to come? Like, I'm doing my thing here and I'm happy with it. But there was a term I learned in Colombia and it was a useful fall. It's a really interesting term. And I'm certainly not a useful fool, but I wanted to comprehend why me, when they've got other incredible tribes, the Kogis are like next door to them kind of, and it's like, why us more? And the answer was, we need each other equally. And I was like, OK. And I went away for a bit. And as is always the way, I understood exactly why. And there's a really cool book that I'd recommend you looking at. I quoted it in. It might be the Poppy podcast I quoted in, actually. And which, again, I'm going to reiterate is a pretty cool podcast because it has me doing my sort of poetic rhyming and trying to speak to what almost cannot be spoken. And it has people who took part in the medicine, which runs for two weeks, by the way, which kind of streams into people, which moves them in their dream state. And rather than go into this now, you can just hear it in the podcast. not knowing what we were working with sharing their experience of it and what was going on for them at that time and the person I think that shares on the poppy one her dad was dying and he was dying from lung cancer because he smoked all of his life and how he had numbed numbed life by smoking basically and and she spoke about how it held her through that experience it's really really moving actually um So anyway, that's the podcast. The work I'll go and do is basically trying to look at how to stop humanity global warming. It would be from my side. I asked the Mamo if it's a story that can be told, and I'm waiting for him to say to me. And the reason I asked if it's a story to be told, because I don't know if we're massively over time, but this is an interesting one. MATT BONGIOVI- Yeah, let's hear it. a kid and um your kid gets the lego pieces out and throws them all over and then every time you bring them to bed you go back to the living room you're like oh god picking up each individual piece and putting it back in you know it's like twenty minutes done you're like next day same things happen next day same things happen next day same things happen at a certain point you're like listen dude amazing cool let's build these towers you know let's get some turrets going off here when we're finished put it back in the box and in one way the reason I'd like to storytell this is because the masters can put the pieces back together again which is why the kogi said just give us what we need to do what we need to do because it's possible to work in those layers in the spiritual balance and the human collective consciousness one can can rebalance things And it's meant to be balanced. It should be balanced. Light and dark should be balanced in our world. Dark is not bad. Light is not, you know, it's like all balanced. So it's possible to do all of this work. It's also possible to do corrective behavior on humanity so that it starts making better decisions. But it takes time, energy, commitment to do that. And not many people know how to do it. And those people that do know how to do it are doing so many other things as well that to sort of dedicate themselves to that's become really difficult. If I take me, for example, I have to do a whole sort of coffee thing rather than and find my what would be free time to do all the other stuff. So I'll go and do that. And I'd like to story tell it if the memo agrees to it. And I would like to take one person out to a documentary film to showcase exactly what we're doing, why we're doing it. But the reason I understood why we need each other equally is because in this counterbalancing of humanity, um it's got so way off whack it needs it needs the gathering of tribes now who can pull their spiritual weight together to sort of counterbalance things and within me I've got I've got a lot of spiritual power that's why I'm able to do the work that I'm I'm doing just some people are good at architecture other people are good at carpentry you know watching a carpenter who can just cut you know well it's perfect I'm rubbish at that, George. I'll measure it fifty times and get it wrong. But I'm good at doing this for whatever reason. So I'll bring my waiting to help work on this thing. And at the same time, I'll learn something that makes a lot of sense to me, but I'd never tried doing before. So I'll learn something that's so sacred that they would not entrust in, well, many, many other people at all. So that's what I'm doing next, since you asked, and about the sessions, the plantly sessions that I do. No, we talk about the commercialization that's gone on with psychedelics and the fact that someone, after having an experience of that kind, comes back and goes, how can I make money from this? Speak to it. Mine is somewhat the opposite. It is the deepest level work. It's the strongest medicine that I know. I'm going to say that. And I committed myself to work, to continue to work with the medicine that changed me for the better. And it was this, it was this. And I had to find, like I say on the, about, I had to find the edges to this. There was no like person going, right, okay, this is what's going to happen in human body. And this is what's, I had to learn it. And so like the most ridiculous stuff goes on. That's just become normal for me now. But to someone else, it's like, whoa, what's that? It's like, yes, this is, this is, this is. So I try not to sort of recruit people. I try not to be like, to market this. Because if someone steps into this, they've got to be ready for it. And, and this idea of, what did you say earlier on, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher, the thing is, because so many people are living from their minds, that they're running after teachers when they weren't ready for them as well. It's like, so you have to ascertain who's actually ready for this. Who has life brought, how has life brought this person to you? Has life done it? Or have they gone, I want to have like crazy vision, dream state active and have a third eye pulsing and like, Um, that no, it's like, and my work and one of the reasons I didn't tell working with, and one of the lectures, this work is that it, it, it brings people into, in the deepest, most painful shadow work for me, all the months and have experienced what goes on in that realm. And it's, and it's painful. Um, it's difficult to feel. And in one of my podcasts, I say to truly feel everything. One must first be able to feel everything so that, um, that's why I'm here I've got to be able to feel every little nuance to every little thing and to be able to sort of wonderfully I don't know have it stream through me and into others I'm going to say so this is not work for the faint-hearted that's for sure and because it it does stuff with the heart as well it's going to get palpitations it's going to be shortness of breath and it's going to massively challenge people's comfort zones within it. And at a certain point, there's one thing when you drink a drink where people have been like, okay, if you take three grams of this and you drink this, my work is not that. And so you've got trust on a human character form to deliver this in the most authentic way. That's difficult. And that's difficult because loads of people have come before that have messed that all up. and continue coming who are messing that all up. So part of it is like, who do you trust? And the interesting thing that I know is that the people working the most purest of ways, not only people coming there, they're all going to the other people who are like Instagramming this and like Photoshopping sort of light waves coming out of hands, which I see a lot of these days as well. So it's like trusting in a human character form to deliver a medicine like this when things are going to get super confrontational. And the only thing that I can say is, Where psychologists have psychologists, I have masters that check on me. And I have masters. So in the case of the Arhuacos, some of the Arhuaco mammals have taken part in my work and continue to take part in my work. Every single session, they show up. The Huni Queen, the indigenous tribe, take part in my work as well. And there's a film on the Plantly website. It's called Tribally. Did you watch that one? And that film has me delivering medicine through my hands into the Huni Kuin, indigenous people that have worked with ayahuasca since they were children, and watching them move with this medicine. So it also shows, in this interconnected world, the importance of everything coming together. And it's not that one thing is better than the other. And it's not that one thing can survive without the other thing. In this moment now, everything must come together. The tribes must come together. Some tribes are tired. Some tribes are getting ill. and it's like everything coming in to support one another and that's what's taking place at the moment so when I'm in this sort of white european british accent voice and I'm going to the sierra to work with tribal people it's not because I'm trying to sort of trophy or or badge because I can't even tell these stories anymore because they're so precious but it's the fact that I sit in that environment and do that same level work because I had the same thing I didn't sit in a dark cave But I move myself into the darkness of the womb to speak with the mother to do the same thing that they did as well. And there might have been shortcuts in some form in the way that I work, but it's been hardcore as well. And I can move people through it well. And some people that take part in my work, some of them have been in therapy for twenty years and they've done I don't want to try and present my work in such a way, because it is what it is, but it has deep integrity to it. And I'm like, I've only worked for six sessions, and therapy didn't touch any of this. So the question then comes, not about, oh, how wonderful I am in human character form. The question comes, how come all these things develop in such a way to be such more sort of beautiful expressions of proper healing? And my thing alone, because of what it can do to a person's body, it needs other things around it. And because what it can do to the mind, it needs other things around it. Because Western has done some things and indigenous people some of them don't have very good teeth because they've not looked after their teeth so they go to western doctors some indigenous people get the need to go to western hospitals it's just how it works so it's not to demonize hospitals I don't want to do that here but I think there needs to be greater degrees of integrity and it shouldn't be about solely monetary motives because that destroys the world so the last thing I say it seems like a beautiful note to leave it on Because I wondered if one of your questions might have been, what is true humanity? And with every podcast, I say playfully playing a part, a part, without feeling a part. And that's what life is for me. It's about, even about being awake in this game of life. It's about doing what you're meant to be doing here. And I think within spiritual movements, there's been a lot of disassociation. And even on the non-duality path that I see quite a bit of where I am here, people step into a guru's field and it's wonderful, but they come back home and they're assholes. So there's something not going right. And people that have done, oh God, I can't remember the name now. It's a meditation over ten days that's in silence. Do you know it? Yeah, I can't think of the name of it either, but I've spoken with multiple people that have had it. So some of the people that do that have taken part in my work as well. And it's been really interesting because they've gone like, what is the point? What's the point in taking part in your work? And I'm like, okay, well, experience it. And they've come out the other side of it going, whoa. So my observer that's observing through the eyes of my character, that lens can totally change. It's like, yes, it can. Everything can change and change up. And they're surprised by it. You know, again, it might be the, no, it's the story from Ram Dass where he gets the sort of guru to take LSD and nothing happens. And it's like, yes, if you've arrived there, I can imagine you can drink a liter of poison and nothing happens. But not too many people have realized that state. So you're you're still in effect where you can be you can be influenced in a positive in a positive way. So I've witnessed that as well. It's been really fascinating because there's a lot of resistance to this work. And I'm a bit more like come and experience it like experience and and then go walk away from it. but you can't explain what is intended to be only experience you know yeah there's there's no substitute for experience and no matter how many stories you listen to or how many books you read they all pale in comparison to the experience that's they touch a little bit of magic a little bit They can't deliver the full majestic form. Enough to tease you into wanting it. And that's the way it should be. Yeah, and I think your poetry comes close... is the ultimate invitation. It gets us closest to it, right? Like there's something that happens with poetry that is felt. It's almost like you can, the felt presence of the other is visceral. You know, you're not quite, you can't quite touch it, but you can feel it on some level. And that's a great invitation. and what the voice delivers because we we shouldn't so written poetry is one thing but a vocal delivery of that poetry is also and this is why you know with ayahuasca they'll they'll blow into it so that breath and blowing has a key place in our in our world and this is also why music with the correct singing and correct relationship with our world can bring people to tears and do wonderful things as well. So voice, breath, heart, it's all interconnected as well. The lungs and heart are very aligned. Yeah, it's the first thing we take when we come into this world and the last thing we give when we leave. There we go. It's so amazing. andy wonderful and then I I I'll definitely link to the the different documentaries and and all the incredible information that you have and for people to reach out to you if you're within the sound of my voice and you enjoyed our conversation today all the links for andy will be down there I recommend you reach out to him and investigate and come see the things that he's doing and feel it like I i I'm blessed to get to talk to you today. And like I said, I hope this is the first of many conversations. And ladies and gentlemen, I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day and you enjoyed this as much as I did. Reach out to Andy. Andy, hang on briefly afterwards, but to everybody else, thanks for participating and have a wonderful day. That's all we got. Aloha. Thank you.