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. I have with me today an incredible individual, Reverend Dr. Jessica Rochester. Madrina President Torchbearer, founder of the Sioux de Montreal, the Santo Daime church she established in nineteen ninety seven, restoring sacred memory to the north. A transpersonal counselor shaped by Asagioli and Groff, she guides seekers through the fire of self-confrontation. From two thousand to twenty seventeen, she secured a section fifty-six exemption protecting the Santo Daime sacrament. An ordained interfaith minister, doctor of divinity, and author of two volumes set ayahuasca awakenings, she has spent more than forty years leading workshops, counseling, and teaching the radical act of spiritual adulthood. Dr. Reverend Jessica, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? Hey, that's a new intro. That was fun. Yeah. Okay, well, I'm happy to be here. Thank you. Always a pleasure to hang out with you and talk about things of mutual interest and hopefully of interest to other people who, you know, who watch the show and enjoy it. So always a joy. And today we have an unusual topic. We do. Yeah. You want to lead it off? I do. We're talking about the geometry of collaboration and specifically how So much of your work, self-care, self-love and self-respect, how that radiates outward into the group. And I put, I put this particular topic and your books into the chat and into the discord. And I got back some incredible questions and I can't wait to hear some of your answers to them, to flesh out some insights and stuff. So let me go ahead and let me go ahead and bring up the first one. It says you you've written deeply on before we start. Yes. Yes. you know me I'm a definition person I always want to make sure that when we're talking about perhaps complex concepts philosophical matters um things that can touch deep into our souls that we actually are working with the same definition on the topic okay well said I found that you know it's really interesting what one person thinks the geometry of collaboration means And what somebody else might think it means might be two very different things. So I thought before we get to questions, if everyone can just be very patient with me, I would love to just start with some definitions. Geometry is something that I studied in high school. I actually loved it. So I'm welcoming back some geometry into the life. So I'm assuming by geometry, you mean that precise mathematical dynamic The angles and, you know, it's like quantum mechanics. You know, geometry, it's all, you can just take it into the same. There's mathematics and science and physics. They all, they're kissing cousins, right? And so if we look at that, we're looking at geometry isn't just shapes on a page, what you and I learned in high school, right? Yeah. circles and triangles and all these wonderful shapes. And we thought that was geometry, right? No, geometry was the relationship between the dynamics of those angles. And can we, so can we take that as being the geometry, that the geometry is kind of a matrix that exists in life. Like you can take the angle of your forehead and it'll be exactly geometrically designed so that the, your whole face is geometrically correct. I mean, isn't that hilarious? A spider's web, geometrically perfect, unless the wind comes along or a big bug gets caught in it or you take your broom to it. So we can look everywhere and like the tree puts out its leaves and each leaf is geometrically perfect. It's snowflake. So geometry is about a precision and a You know, a concept of relationship in which nature and physical matter reality manifests itself. Yes. Right? So can we agree on that's the geometry part of it? And collaboration. Here's where it gets quite interesting. Like everything else in life, there's the zen of it. The good aspect of collaboration when people work together. Teamwork. effort, good communication, clarity, follow-up. That's the kind of benefit and the genuine kind of business world definition of collaboration. And then there's the dark side. The Nazi collaborators, people who are behind closed doors and whispers, collaborate. So there's a dark side to it. And we would be remiss if we did not put both things on the table because both things are always in operation. That's the Zen of it. There is no light without dark, no dark without light. And the more we name things and make a space to self-examine from a hopefully as neutral place as possible, the more neutral we are, the more we can assess and then, if necessary, transform. At least be aware of, right? So Anyway, those are my thoughts. If you have something to add to that, and the one thing, what's the one thing that makes the distinction between teamwork, collaboration, let's call it that for now, cooperative, harmonious collaboration, okay, and the dark side of collaboration? What's the difference? The one thing that makes it fall on one side or the other? Intention? Yes, well done. I was vibrating the word at you. I felt it. I received it. Intention. Intention. That's what makes it fall on one side or another. Okay? If our intention is harmony, then we work towards that. If our intention is something else, then our collaboration will bear different fruit. So if our intention is power, if our intention is greed, it may look like we're collaborating, but we have a whole other thing going on. Okay. Is that going to get to questions now? Is that helpful? And yeah, it's incredibly helpful. And if we want, like if, if we can pull on that thread a little bit more, like we can get to the questions later, but I, I, I know you well enough to know that when I brought up the topic of geometry of collaboration, that you have some beautiful insights on it. And I would love to hear more. Sure. Okay. So if we look at back to the geometry of collaboration, okay, if we try to get an understanding of that, so we've defined it and we're agreeing on a basic flexible definition. Okay. That includes relationship and that there's some, a matrix and already existing matrix of dynamics. Okay. And, and that intention is what precipitates the collaboration. if the collaboration is geared towards harmony, to wisdom, to understanding, to development, to growth, okay, then that's what the intention should be able to keep that on track. And that's where ethics come in, right? Ethics come in. We have a good intention. How many things, who was it who said, oh, perhaps no one said it, but it's so embedded in culture, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Okay, so we have to be careful with intentions. We have to be careful with intentions. We really have to have self-awareness when it comes to intentions because we can have very, very good intentions and we can step into something that is not ours to step into. We can start something with best of intentions, but let whatever it is behind the intentions carry us over into things. without realizing that it would have been better to wage or get some professional advice or look into something more deeply, okay? So intention can't exist in a vacuum. Intention within us must always be working with inner wisdom, our heart, our instincts, our experience, our training, the best of our mind, okay? Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Okay. So once we've kind of got that going, okay, to intentionality and we see, we can see that if we're willing to practice self-awareness and self-care, the things we ticked off a minute ago, we can see that gearing towards a positive and harmonious collaboration is something that most of us would like to create in order to do life. Where does it start? It starts in science. unless we're collaborating with ourselves, working harmoniously within with the various parts that are inside of us, you know, everybody, you know what I mean by the parts of us, okay? We have all different parts, okay? There's the body, there's the soul, there's the mind, there's the thoughts, there's the feelings, they all arise and fall away, you know, and there's different aspects to our personality and our character and our experience and our beliefs and It's all these different things that make us us, you know, and our ability to recognize them and work with them and hopefully have a sense of humor with quite a bit of it because that's going to see us through those sticky tight corners, you know? Yeah. So collaboration, that geometry, that matrix that exists in the whole universe is within us. You know, and And how do we have that inner collaboration? What does that look like? Are we listening to ourselves, to our inner wisdom? Or are we living out our life according to what we think other people want us to be or need us to be? What society and culture has told us that we should want to achieve or have or own? Does that make some sense? Is that starting to answer some of your questions? Yeah. It speaks to the... the volume being turned up on culture. And I don't know if it's new or it's been going on forever, but it seems that when the volume is so turned up on culture, that it can interfere with our inner voice. And I think for me, I get stuck there sometimes, and maybe other people in the group do too. Yes. And so culture is an essential one. aspect of humanity. You know, it's culturally diverse throughout history, culturally diverse around the world. But let's set that one on one side for a moment and let's just look at Western civilization and maybe even more so because that includes kind of Europe and other places, Western civilization. Let's just focus on kind of North America, you know, Because South America is vastly different than Central America. The cultures are very different. And even, I'm Canadian, even the Canadian culture is really still quite different from the American culture. The thing is, is the American culture has a very loud voice. It has a very loud voice. And it's not unique, okay? Many cultures throughout the history of the human race have had loud voices. And cultures have, I mean, look at the Roman Empire, for goodness sakes. Choose any, the Byzantine, the Egyptian. These empires rise and fall away, and they change. But in this last period of time, in this last chunk of time, in mother culture around the world, one of the louder voices has been the American voice. Now, for many reasons, first of all, there's a huge warehouse of talent. There is. We just have to acknowledge that, recognize that, whether it's technology or whether it's acting or music or, you know, there's just a huge warehouse of talent in the American culture. So what was happening, that culture's voice wasn't just loud, but that it was sort of more narrowly focused on certain things. But if we look at older cultures or different cultures, we'll see that in many of them, there's a greater balance between having and doing and being. That an important part of many cultures is spiritual practice, for example. You can go to some countries, and at every crossroads, there's a little altar, and there's flowers, and there's candle burning, and there's temples everywhere, and people are living In their culture, it's accepted a certain level of spirituality. And I don't just mean religion, religious observances. Okay, that's something very important in many cultures and to many people. But I'm talking more about the spirituality. That's bereft in North America. Spirituality is, it just shrank away and almost disappeared. And then the new age movement in the opportunity of the psychedelic Renaissance in the sixties and early seventies, the opportunity for spirituality was opened. Uh, the door to the east was opened a great blessing that I was able to go through that door in Buddhism and Hinduism, um, became introduced into North American culture and Western civilization and practices like meditation and yoga and many of the Eastern traditions. became commonplace, became available and then commonplace and accepted and researched and et cetera into the culture. But somehow the spirituality didn't transmit as much as it could have, you know. And I just stand there, I shake my head because I'm amazed by the fact that there's, you know, hot yoga and yoga with booming, boom, boom, hip-hop music and all of this stuff. And the spirituality is gone. Now, maybe it's great exercise and maybe it's, you know, I'm all for people being active, whatever it is you want to do. It doesn't matter to me. Play tennis, go skiing, you know. But the bottom line is, what happened to the spirituality? And it's as if the American culture is some kind of a sinkhole for spirituality. You know, it arrives and then it just then, poof, it disappears. Yeah. Or it gets transformed. And I'm wondering if that's the commercialization and the monetizing that happens. Because I watched this happen where the things that I was doing, going to the ashram and doing yoga and studying with the Buddhists and all of these things that I was doing and Om Namah Shivaya and Om Mani Padme Hum and all these things that went into my soul and stayed and grew roots and everything. And I would look around, and I'd see all of this stuff, and it became something else. And then the New Age movement kind of developed. And transpersonal and spiritual is vastly different from New Age. And now I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with New Age, okay? Something for everyone. It's just cannot, it is not spirituality. It's New Age spirituality. It's something completely different. And there's a lot of commercialization. I don't quite know how to say this. So we see this with the psychedelic, you know, this century's psychedelic movement and entheogens and it's all about something else that it never was about. It's become something that's packaged and sold. And so all that's kind of interesting is as we look at this and where's the collaboration and where's the geometry gone now did I go off on a tangent you asked me a question sorry no I feel like we got a lot more squares than circles in this new sort of commercialization yeah that's a good way to put it yeah yeah you know I think on some level, I shouldn't say that. I believe that the monetization and the commercialization has sort of extracted what it wants from spirituality and turned it into something new, something that is unrecognizable to someone that may have known spirituality in a different way. And that's where the collaboration comes in. You know, I see, especially in the psychedelic Renaissance, I see these new definitions of what success look like, where before, you know, when I think of spiritualization, I think of someone. Finding a way to liberate themselves and it's open to everybody. It's a birthright but in this new model, it's the commercialization that is looks that's painted with a the the illusion of success if that sort of makes sense and it pulled that that sort of illusion is pulling people towards this new age or this this Monetization of spiritualization and it's I don't see those two things as being congruent Well, first of all, we need to, you know, do full disclosure here. Commercialization of things spiritual has been going on for thousands and thousands of years. Okay, good. Okay, let's go back to Jesus overthrowing the moneylenders. Nice. In front of the temple, okay? So we can't pretend this is something new or something that America dreamed up. Okay, it's been around. This is a human thing. This is a human thing. Okay. And if we look at it, we're just going to have to say, yeah, it's always been around. These dynamics, these dynamics are part of human experience. And it's up to each of us as individuals to recognize it, to see if we want to collaborate, dark side of collaborate, okay? If we want to collaborate with whatever it is that we see, or if we want to just step away from it. And, you know, it's such an interesting moment to see how things are evolving, right? And what will come from the future, you know? And so we started with collaboration being something that is within ourselves. If we have inner harmony, if we are working in teamwork with the parts of ourselves, in other words, If we are willing to listen to intuition and inner wisdom and our voice of fear and our instincts and our inner child and all of these different parts that make us up, are we willing to sit down and do a powwow with them, okay, and listen to what they have to say and then go forward with that? Or are we closing down inner voices and not listening to them and turning them off and repressing them, at which point we have to ask ourselves, okay, why am I doing that? who have I put in charge and who's driving the bus? So, and where's the bus headed to, you know? So now if we have a dark inner collaboration, then, then that will cause inner distress. It will cause illness of one kind or another. Okay. I'm not saying that the inner struggle is a source of, a sole source of disease. Please don't anybody ever hear me say that. It's a factor. It's a factor in illness. Whether it gives us headaches or backaches or runny tummy or whatever it is, you know, it lowers our immune response. And the lack of inner harmony can lead to all kinds of things. So collaboration internally, first of all. And then in our life with our families. with our neighbors, in our workspace, if we're a student, with our colleagues, you know. And then are we collaborating with nature? Are we a positive, in a positive teamwork with nature? Or are we on the dark side, and we're busy dumping our pollution in the rivers and the seas? So it starts inside and it goes all the way out. It touches everything in our life, focus on the light and that which is transcendent, that which is healing, that which is fruitful, that which is positive, and we do our best to bring that into our life in all areas where it can touch, or whether we are the dark side of ourselves, the selfie, petty, greedy, I don't know, we have a whole list of human qualities, if you want to call them qualities, that can be categorized as being on the dark side page, okay? And do we cooperate? Are we collaborating with that? You know? And if we have the inner default of the light, then we will choose situations where we feel that that light will be supported and work in harmony with others. If we downgrade ourselves into the dark side, then that's who we will be collaborating with. the universe has a remarkable way of sending people exactly what we need to get our lessons. Yes. Okay. Were there more questions on that? Or do you want to get to the questions that you said you had prepared? I do. I have a few that I wanted to reach out. But I think that it's a nice segue. And I think some of these intersect. And the first one comes to us from Donovan. And he says, you've written deeply on self-care, self-love, and self-respect. How do these practices form the foundation of collaboration and community? I think we touched on that. Thank you for asking your question. And thank you for reading some of the things that I've written. Again, if we are taking care of ourselves and taking care in our life, and that self-care means self-awareness, self-love, self-respect, and self-responsibility, then we will do our best to try and bring that into situations with others in our workplace, in our community, in our spiritual life, in our congregation, for example. then we will be doing our best to always have that be the intention and the focus. And so that's where we have the greatest possibility of achieving better well-being for community life is if we're bringing that forward. We can see a lot of what's happening in your country right now and countries around the world where where people sense that there's a dark collaboration going on, okay? We feel it. We see evidence of it the same way, you know, when the drums were starting to beat before the Second World War, there were people who saw the beginning signs, okay? The same way you can look and say, oh, spring's coming, there's the first crocus, the same way you can look and see manifestations of, the dark side of collaboration, right? And those who are awake enough, aware enough to see it and who feel called to stand up and point it out and speak to it, end up by serving their community by holding on to that which is true, that which is right, that which has the good benefit for all or at least aiming for that because it'll always fall short somewhere, right? There's no perfect country. There's no perfect government. There's no perfect person. There's no perfect plan. Okay. It's always in motion. It's always evolving or devolving depending on who's driving the bus. So that we can see, and we can see that around the world. It's not just in one country. We can see it all over the place. Okay. Because it's part of human nature. And there's no point in the history of the human species where it hasn't been in existence. I personally do not believe that, you know, maybe, wouldn't it be wonderful if there was peace on Earth and all of that? That would be wonderful, but I just don't think it's possible. Certainly not in my timeline in this life. There's too much human nature that is against it. There just is. you know and that cosmic clash gets played out it's very archetypal and that cosmic clash gets played out on a daily basis those who want power and control and who feel that they are entitled to take it those who want peace and are willing to stand up for it the the gandhis of the world right martin luther king's you know the barack obama's they the good people who are willing to stand up and speak the truth. And there's many of them throughout history. They usually get killed, unfortunately. It's just a really sad thing to say, but they do. And so we see this. We see this in everyday life. And we get to choose which side we're going to stand on. Or if we're just going to pretend and go into denial and say, I'm just me and there's nothing I can do. And let's talk about that for a minute. Why do people take that place? Sorry if I'm itching you around. I had a complete hip replacement five weeks ago. Okay. It's a major surgery. And so I'm a little bit wiggly. I'm getting used to it. Okay. I now have a foreign object in my body. It's about six or seven inches carved out of me and a whole new ceramic thing put in. So we'll see. So if I'm wiggling around a little bit, apologies to everybody. Does it make sense what I'm saying? Yeah, without a doubt. Collaboration and about, I hope I've answered the gentleman's question. If it starts within us, then do we have a duty? And that's a whole other thing. Intention is one thing, but what's responsibility? What's duty? As a citizen of planet Earth, do we have a duty to try and uphold that which we believe in? You know, that's for each person to examine their own conscience. And again, there's those who will stand up and speak up and they will vote and they will stand on the corner with a bullhorn and placards and, you know, and they will write to their members of parliament or in your case, members of Senate and the House, right? Okay. And they will write to their politicians who is supposed to be representing them and they will take positions sign petitions and doing what they can to support the positive movement forward. If we look at throughout history, we will see that good people with good intentions have been doing that for a very long time. Unfortunately, the other collaborators have an equal force, if not sometimes greater, okay? And they're working against that. We're back to the cosmic clash. And for me, the question is, okay, I get the people who want to do good. I think you and I are part of that team, right? Yeah. Yeah, we devote our time and our energy and our goodwill to trying to educate and bring topics and open discussions and things like that. And then there's people, you know, we can recognize them and, hey, that's their karma. It's not, it's just recognize them and that's it, you know. But what about the people who think they're staying neutral? You notice I said yeah making you know making not making a decision is making a decision yes yes and it's it's easy it's easy to not make a decision no you don't think so no I don't think it's easy to not make a decision because there's always consequences hmm People who don't understand consequences think it's easy to not make a decision, I'll let everybody else decide. But then you have consequences. Other questions? Yes. Who do we have here? We have Desiree, and this one is a beautiful question. Thank you, Desiree, for being here. She says, can you describe a time when friction or tension in community actually sharpened the shared vision rather than breaking it? Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Great question. So this is, there's a cycle, you know, we've been going through more recently. Well, I can, I'm going to go back to Jack Kornfield's book after the ex-Siva laundry, which I believe published in the year two thousand. Okay. Just at the moment when I was facing in the Santa Tanya, I'd only been in it four years at that point and different culture and different language and long distances and trying to figure everything out, okay, that I was becoming aware of ethical concerns and issues in that lineage that we were in until twenty ten. Okay. And inspired by Jack Winfield, who spoke about ethical problems in spiritual communities and gave a roadmap for it. He basically said, if you don't have If you've joined a spiritual tradition and there's no code of ethics, write one and take it to the elders, which is exactly what I did. I did that, and when they didn't want to accept it, I had my answer. So, when individuals recognize the power of ethics and the power of having an agreed upon code of ethics, in their organization, their group, their congregation, their business, whatever it is, okay? I mean, even a family needs a kind of code of ethics. Let's call them house rules. Everybody has to contribute. Everyone has to share, right? I mean, you don't expect a toddler to do their bit, but they do learn to put away their toys, right? So, I mean, you have to start somewhere. First place most parents start is put away your toys, right? Here's the toy box and go finish playing and they go. So a family has its own. Now it may be unwritten, undiscussed, okay, unaddressed, but depending on the ethics, it's the parents and the family. That's the house rules. That's the ethics. And the more clear they are, the more they are inspired by, positive, love, harmony, truth, and justice, okay, when those four qualities are at play, then absolutely the spirituality has an opportunity to shine its brightest. The more ego and gains and psychological gains and power gains and lower self activities are at play, the less the spirituality Spirit will remove itself. It just will. Which is one of the reasons you're left with kind of empty forms of religions. Where there's a form, but there's no content. There's no spirituality left. And where you'll have spiritual practices that may have very kind of Delicates are almost non-existent forms to them. Go and sit in nature. Respect nature. That's fertile. And so, yes to your question, the more the light can shine and manifest, the more love, harmony, truth, and justice can shine and manifest in a family, in a group, in a congregation, in a spiritual group. It's because there is this, we're calling it the geometry of collaboration today, but the more clear the agreement is about the intentionality of the group and the ethics therein. For example, in a home, if the parents teach the children, no, honey, we don't hit, we don't hit, bite your three-year-old friend who came over to play with you, okay, and you train them, no. I know you feel like doing that because he took your toy. Okay. And I feel, you know, I get it. You really want to do that kick and bite, but that's not what we do. We find other ways to manage situations. Right. And so it really depends on what we're being taught and what we're being shown. If we are being shown that negative collaboration, that selfishness and abuse of power gets rewarded, then what's going to happen? low trust society, a collapse of the structures. Yes. So you will end up, and you will see this in spiritual organizations. You'll see this in, in businesses. Okay. You will see this everywhere. It's not just spiritual organizations. You'll see it anywhere where there's a group of people. Okay. Wherever there is a lock of ethics, wherever there is, um, the opportunity for abuse, wherever there are people who are either codependent and or enabling the abuse or hiding it in some way, the more the abuse will grow. And the more entitled other people will be to carry on the same abuse. Sad, but true. In other words, if dad kicks the dog, I can kick the dog. It's okay to kick dogs. That's how it works. If mom says, don't smoke cigarettes while she lights one up. What are the children going to do? They're going to smoke cigarettes. Yeah. So our impeccability As an individual, it was, is what sets the tone for just about everything else around us. A friend of mine in Brazil sent me this little video. I'm not sure if it's circulated outside of Brazil yet because you know, things go around and, and there's, uh, what looks like the kind of dog my son has a golden golden retriever. He has a red golden retriever, you know, happy dogs. There are therapy dogs there. They're wonderful, loving, easy to get along with, you know, and it goes into this chamber where there's hundreds of mirrors and the dog runs around looking at all these versions of itself, but it's seeing this happy, excited dog to see all these other dogs, you know, there aren't any other dogs here, you know, but that's what the dog got back was this mirror image of this happy, you know, barking a little bit, but then happy tail wagging, barking, okay? And then they took a completely different dog. They took a very kind of aggressive dog, dog kind of trained for guarding or what have you. And they put the dog in this mirrored experience. And the dog went nuts, growling and barking and attacking and attacking and attacking and attacking. And at the end of it, it says, whatever you put out is what you get back. Life is a mirror. and you put out friendliness, then most of the time you're not always going to get it back. But the odds of you getting it back is higher than not, okay? This is where we need discernment. Discernment really needs to be in our toolkit of life, right? That knapsack we have on our back with all the good stuff that we might need, okay? Discernment is a really important one, you know? But if we go through life barking and growling at everyone, well, that's what we're going to get back to, you know? So I have no idea if I answered the question she asked. It was beautiful. And you put up something about government. What did you put up? I did. You know, Dr. Jessica, I want you to meet my dad. My dad also named George Monty. He is chiming in here. Thank you, dad, for being here. I want you to meet an incredible individual. Dr. Jessica has been an incredible light in my life. Thank you. My dad says power is corruption. Government is a power struggle between parties that leads to corruption. Ethics goes out of the window when power is up for grabs. We can teach right or wrong, but when power comes into effect, corruption comes into play. I would add. Yeah. I would agree with your dad. Yeah. Well, except for a little distinction. Yeah, let's hear it. It's not just when power is up for grabs, okay? It's when there's a subversion of power, okay? Because every time we vote, power is up for grabs, right? Kind of, so to speak, okay? The voting, we don't know who's going to be our next prime minister, for example, or, you know, next president, or whatever it's going to be, or And so what we can see is power is always, is it us that's holding integrity with the power of our office, whether our office is as a parent or as a teacher in a classroom or as a manager in a business situation or a ritual leader in a religious tradition, those are all offices of power. And with that office of power comes responsibility. But the problem is when the people around us don't hold us accountable to the power of the office. If the people around us hold us to the power of the office, then that office will be kept clean. It will be kept ethical. But if the people around us don't hold the office correctly, that's when the corruption goes. I'll give you a good example of one, again, that Jack Kornfield wrote about. He was writing about what happened with a lot of the Buddhist and Hindu teachers when they came to Western civilization and more specifically to America and how they were, you know, food, women, drugs, everything was being flung at them because that was what was happening in the era, okay? It was free love and music and LSD. I mean, all these things were happening at the same time that serious spiritual teachers were arriving. And some of them, the people around them kept them intact. They protected them from these influences. But that didn't always work. You have stories where the very people who should have been holding their leader accountable to the principles in which they had received their office were cooperating in codependent ways. You know, the main disciples holding up the, sneaking alcohol to the Buddhist monk who became an alcoholic, okay, and was so drunk he couldn't do the satsang or what have you, you know. And they'd be either side of him, holding him up and doing the prayers or the chants, okay. And so this level, so it's the people around you, if they remain uncorruptible, then the office is held ethical. Example, the Pope decided he wanted to do something that was not in alignment with the office of the Pope. Okay. One would hope that the bishops would sit him down and the archbishops and whoever else might and say to him, dear Pope, you can't do this. You know, All the years I've been in our center, the thirty years that I founded, over the thirty years next year that I founded Center Montreal, and what I told everybody was, hold me accountable to the office. If you ever see me do something that you have a question on, you have to come and talk to me. Please. Because you are serving me. You're serving me. If you ignore it, if you pretend it didn't happen, you see me doing something or think I'm doing something, And it's outside of our agreed upon ethical code. You have a duty to come and talk to me about it. That's how I know you're my friend. Not that you cover up for me. Not that you lie for me. But that you sit and tell me the truth. Now, we can see in all kinds of situations where people are scared to tell the truth now. And you have to ask yourself, what's happening that allows this? Okay, did we have more questions? Yeah, that was a brilliant answer. Thank you for that. Let's see, who do we got coming in over here? This one comes to us from our friend Ranga. Ranga says, what does it mean to you to build an intentional community that is both sustainable and sacred? Best of luck if that's what you're doing, dear. You're going to need so much courage and determination and faith. So if you are in that situation, otherwise I doubt you'd be asking the question, right? Those are the qualities that you need. And you also need a little bit of, oh, how can I put this? It's kind of beyond faith and determination and confidence and courage and like that. There has to be something inside of you that is so clear on the mission. You have to be so clear on the mission. I don't know how else to call that, okay? But if you're really clear on the mission and you keep your eyes focused on the mission, then whatever that mission is, you want to build a sailboat that's going to sail the Atlantic? Okay, then you keep your eyes on the mission. You want to become a yoga teacher and start teaching yoga? God bless. Keep your eye on your mission. Do everything that you need, all those positive steps that lead step by step in the direction of your goal. And, you know, again, that's very Buddhist, right thought, right word. you know, right action, the next right step. And that's something that, you know, is a hallmark of my own practice is what is for the higher good and what is the next right step? And this is something everybody in my church knows is what is for the higher good? What is for the health and the well-being of our church and for our members? And these decisions, what is for the greater good? And so if those are your intentions, if those are your goals, to do that which will be for the health and well-being, for the greater good, for the higher good, then it will be very difficult. It's not going to be easy, but it will be more simple. Because each time we stray away from that, we fall asleep on the path, we get tricked into something, right? And they're all wake-up calls. They're all important teachings. But the thing we need to do is wake up on the path and get going. Put our feet back on the path and get going. Forgive ourselves. Understand why we fell asleep or why we let ourselves get tricked. And there's so many wonderful stories. Clarissa Pencola Estes, I highly encourage everyone to read her book, Women Who Run With Wolves. Even men should read it. And she's filled with beautiful stories, archetypal stories about the journey, you know, life's journey and all the challenges that come to us and how to wake up and recognize what our heart longs for and what our soul needs and how to be authentic in everyday life. I have no idea if I answered your question, but it was a great question. Thank you. Yeah, it was brilliant. I'm reminded of my dad used to tell me, George, you know, in life, if you do what is easy, your life will be hard. But if you do what is hard, your life will be easy. It's very good. Yeah. Yeah. Not sure about the easy part. You know, to accept that, you know, the first, Great truth is life is difficult, quickly followed by no one escapes illness or suffering. We all age and we all die, okay? So maybe your dad's an ultimate optimist, which chapeau, okay, Mr. Bhatti? You know, but I think the Buddha kind of nailed it because we have moments of joy and moments of ease and moments of peace and then it's quickly followed by more challenges. And some people have very difficult lives. And you can think, well, I mean, can you imagine living in the Gaza right now or in the Ukraine or in the Sudan or parts of China? I mean, there's so many places in the world where we can look and we think, my goodness, did those people ask to be born there? I don't think so. I don't think so. They just arrived, and this is their karma in this lifetime, and how did they make the best of it? So we can't get smug over in our little peaceful corner of the world. We must not get smug. We must not take for granted the great gift that we have, the freedoms that we have, that we must protect with our fullest intention. The freedom of speech, all the freedoms of voting and You know, women can work and drive cars and get university degrees, which is not so in quite a few countries around the world. And so we must value and guard safe our democracies, shall we call it that? Guard them safe and keep the rights and freedoms that we have so many millions and millions of people who have died fighting defeat. We need to honor all of that. We need to see what can I do in my little life that's going to keep that? How can I support it? What can I do? And I don't want to hear anybody, you know, sometimes, oh, through the years, it's so sad, but people get all bogged down by this. Oh, the earth is dying and they're going through this terrible depression. I think, how does that help the earth? I'm sorry. It doesn't help the earth. You're being brutally depressed because the earth is dying or because You know, women can't drive cars in that country over there. You know, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, take care of yourself and go do some charitable work. You know, you want to help? Help. You know, yes, it's going to be a tiny little thing. But if a few million, if not billion people each did one tiny little thing, it would make a difference. Thanks. So we have in each lifetime, we have the opportunity to be in what the geometry of collaboration for health, for well-being, for the betterment, the higher good of not just ourselves, but all beings. Yeah. I love that. It's trying to make your candle grow bright. It's trying to be a light, maybe a torch in a labyrinth that maybe someone else catches a flicker of. Kind of leads them one more step. Yeah. That's it. That's all we can do. We can't go and carry five billion people. We can't. We can't. We can't single-handedly get the plastic out of the ocean. We can't. And what we can do is we can live our best life. And that means finding balance, finding authenticity, finding balance, taking care of ourselves, taking care of our family, our home, supporting our community. I think that's another thing that's kind of got lost in the shuffle is spirituality informs individual and community life. It is the nourishment, okay? It's the nourishing of the soul that informs the well-being in the life. When that is diminished, the person gets filled up with materialism. If I have this car, if I get this job, if I date this woman slash man, if I Botox my forehead and plump my lips and do something downstairs, you know, I mean, we have lots of people now. Seriously, we have plastic people. Yeah. And it's scary. It's scary. You know, that's a whole other conversation is what's happening to true beauty. Okay. Maybe that's our next podcast. What's our next conversation? What is, what is it? What is true beauty? Yeah, I like that. Okay. That's it. On that note, I have to say goodbye unless you had one last question. That's all we got from the chat. I have some people in here and I'll weave them into the next podcast. To everybody that participated today from Donovan and Ranga and Desiree and Nathan, and of course my father, I love you. And Dr. Jessica, it's such a pleasure. I'm grateful for your time today and for the experience that you're sharing with us. Where can people find you? If you got something coming up or people are listening to this, maybe they want to pick up a copy of Ayahuasca Awakenings or find out what you're doing. Where can they go and do that? Go to my website, www.revdrjessicarochester.com, and you'll find lots of information there. You'll find plenty of information, all of it available for educational purposes. If you're interested in my books, they aren't about ayahuasca. Some of her viewers, good colleagues and friends of mine said, it's like, why don't you call it Ayahuasca Awakening? Because the editor made me nuts when we were publishing, let's put ayahuasca in the title. Okay, they had another title. And because of trying to awaken people to the reality of the situation, but the books are really about self-transformation, self-discovery, and self-development, and mastery of ourselves. And so you're all welcome to look into that. Those of you who are interested in the Psalms of Daini, I'm the Madrina of Sodom and Treho. That's a completely different website, so don't write to me on my personal website. That's www.podcast. santodyne, lowercase, one word, .ca. And I'm excited about being able to walk further around the block. I should, by a week from now, be able to drive my car. But considering I can't sit much longer than an hour without having to stand up and walk around or lie down, You know, this last week I've had more energy, which is why I've been able to start slowly doing things. The other thing I'm excited about is the retreats that we are doing. If any of you are professionals in the field, if you are graduate and postgraduate or doctorate level students in allied fields, working with or hoping to work with MPGens and psychedelics, we have a retreat that we have for ostensibly two universities, University of Ottawa and Vancouver Island University. We put together a retreat format for them, but we've opened it up to professionals in the field and graduate and postgraduate students from other universities who wish to have this retreat experience with us. So contact our church, not me, for more information on that. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. Go down to the show notes. Check out all the incredible work by Dr. Jessica Rochester. And that's all we got for today. Hang on briefly afterwards, Dr. Jessica, and I'll send everybody else to the show notes. Thank you so much, everyone. Aloha.