Latest / Surviving-ISH Podcast / Is Life Ever Actually Figured Out? The Art of Surviving "Ish" | w/ Shawn Helgerson

Transcript

Is Life Ever Actually Figured Out? The Art of Surviving "Ish" | w/ Shawn Helgerson · Surviving-ISH Podcast

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: All right, welcome to Surviving Ish.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Y'all uh I've just had an hour-long off-regord conversation with uh someone who I've kind of determined who's gonna be my bestie.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna have him on the show all the time.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: We actually have some upcoming projects that we are gonna uh work on with Jenny from Unholier, who was actually just a guest on Unholier podcast, which I'll share that link in the show notes.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: But he is a writer, a teacher, Air Force veteran.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: He is a father, uh, a husband, and just an amazing guy.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait for you guys to meet him.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Sean Haugerson, and thank you so much, man, for being with me.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's I've I had a blast talking to you before, so I think this ended the whole conversation.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so excited about the upcoming projects that are you're gonna be getting emails from I'm gonna have to just send you my phone number so you can get texts from me all the time.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because I will say before I get into my ish, I will say, like you and I were emailing each other the other day, talking about you know, just the structure of the podcast, and we started conversation via email.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: And when I went back today to look to just refresh myself on some notes, I was like, we shared almost 20 emails back and forth together in like a span of an hour.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: So so I thought that was really cool.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: I already knew just from that that there was gonna be a cool connection and conversation, and like I said, guys, um, and I'm sure Sean will tell us a bit about this, uh, because this show is gonna be different than his interview with Ginny on Unholier, but I'm also gonna share that link so that way anything that we refer to from Unholier, you can you all can also easily access that episode and listen to it.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not gonna be like listening to the same episode, just different platforms.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: But okay, so man, okay, here's what I'm surviving-ish.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: I had uh just recently started a new job.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm trying to learn all the different parts of it because I'm going uh, I've always been into like, well, not always the past few years, I've been property management.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so some of the tasks that I do, I'm able to just put in my headset and listen to my podcast or my side country song, whatever it is I'm feeling that day.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll get a phone call, and my I'll I'll take my earbuds out and answer the phone, and I can say hello, and they'll say, Hey David, and then it reconnects to my Bluetooth.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I keep battling with it, just and and so I have to take my earpiece pieces out, put them inside the case holder in order to have freaking conversation, and then it ends up being I spend more time not being on Bluetooth than the conversation that honestly probably could have just been a text message that wouldn't have interrupted my show to begin with.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: But then, like, I started spiraling into at least it's not winter anymore, because during the winter I would start my car and then I would need to call because I call my grandmother every morning, and as soon as I get on the phone with her, it would want to connect to my car.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm not in my car, like so.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: You experienced because I was hoping, Sean, that you'd be able to say, Well, David, all you have to do is press this one button and it's all no, I don't.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was hoping you have the same the worst.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: I am so mad at it.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in in my office where I work, I get a lot of phone calls from contractors, and sometimes I gotta I'm having negotiations and things like that, and I don't want to have it in front of everybody else there, and so I'll step outside for a minute, and I can't tell you how many times it's happened that I've got my headphones in because I'm listening to some like ADHD relief music while I'm working on spreadsheets.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Contractor calls and I'll answer it.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or um, what's another thing that happened?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, I've been like, oh no, no, I'll have them out and they'll be like sitting on the desk and they will have disconnected themselves.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: He like went to sleep, and I forgot that they were even there, right?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then the phone call comes in and I'll say, Oh, hey, Jimmy or Leo or whatever, and I'll step outside to start talking, and then all of a sudden it goes dead.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And don't that's because the headphones woke back up and they connected.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I don't know.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't know, I gotta push through the buttons and try to figure out how to turn the Bluetooth off.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I've learned to do the same thing now.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as the phone rings, I take them out and I put them in the case and I close it so I know they're turned off, so they won't just come on, come alive on their own, like little Frankenstein earbuds.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that's so annoying.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the same thing, or there's a couple that makes funny videos, and there's this one where he gets in his car and starts it up, and it's like this like uh this romance novel is playing, and it's like, and then I'm gonna take you and love you forever, all this kind of stuff.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: But his wife is inside listening to the headphones, and she's just yeah, and connecting, and she's he's like, What is going on?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was gonna say, I Googled, why does this keep happening to me?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: There has to be something that there has to be a button I can push, you know, that that eliminates all this that I just don't know about.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: It led me down a rabbit hole.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and it ran I ran across this story.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: I won't do it justice, but the quick version of it, this single guy lived in this apartment, and his neighbor finally had to come ask him to disconnect the Bluetooth because there were her refrigerator uh would connect to his Bluetooth while he was watching porn.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so her Bluetooth uh refrigerator, which uh rich people, something I will never probably understand.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like my refrigerator, I think, has a button that says if you want it colder, I can push it twice.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's as high tech as it gets.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: But like, could you imagine if you're like sleeping in bed at night and all of a sudden you hear this exotic story, and it's single guy next door, like whatever fetish she has.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, it wasn't anything too crazy.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so now it's unlocked this fear in me.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a single guy.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are my neighbors witnessing?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Before you watch porn, turn your Bluetooth off.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's life advice for everybody.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do not hit play on Pornhub unless you've already turned off your Bluetooth.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Recipe for trouble.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's one thing that I love about this podcast is we're here to help solve problems before, but it has it's unlocked this fear in me.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, yeah, my neighbors haven't said anything, so I'm like, are they a little weird too?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And do they like what I listen to?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, no way to find out.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess we'll see.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: But they're playing random people to do.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that's what I've been struggling with.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Anybody out there if you know how to solve this problem?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because by the time that I can get them out, find the little thing in the in my pocket to put them in and then answer the phone, they've uh it's already gone to voicemail, and you know, it it becomes this whole thing.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I'm fortunate because I I work at a desk and so everything's like right there in front of me.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I can just do it quickly so I know it doesn't go to voicemail.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I can't even imagine if I had to like look around and fun fumble for the thing.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: That'd make me nuts.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I've got some brain injuries.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I drink.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not always gonna remember where my little capsule thing is or what pocket they're in, you know, to find or to dig them out, or if I have my hands, and it always happens, right?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like someone wants to call you when you're you have your hands full with groceries or laundry, and so it's just it's become a thing for me, and I don't love it.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can commiserate, I get it.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, what about you?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: What are you surviving ish?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I learned something about teenage girls recently.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: That uh I did not know was a thing.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: So my my daughter's nine, and she's kind of getting into that, you know, the preteen, the tweens age.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I promised her that I would take her and she'd go get boba yesterday.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: We had some, she had some like tasks that she had to do when she finished them.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, we'll go get boba together.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we did.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we brought one of her friends, the one of the neighborhood girls, you know, and just we're placed her order and we're sitting there waiting.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And there were some older, like older teens and early 20s, folks on the other side of the room, like in the little eating area there.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Quinn and I were talking, and she moved in her chair and it squeaked a little bit on the floor.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm a dad, so I was like, Oh, Quinn, and it kind of like waved my hand in front of my nose, like, oh and apparently that's a really bad thing to do.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, it's turned like beat red.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she's not talking to me for the next week.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, well, yeah, like the whole rest of the day, she would not talk to me at all.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, What?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was like it was funny, and then but apparently, then I told my wife about it, and she was like, Why would you do that to her?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Because I thought I thought it was funny, and then and then uh her friend Izzy, she's like, Mr.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sean, why why did you do that to Quinny?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I like I really don't know what the hang-up is because this I don't know.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a man living in a woman's world sometimes, and I'm still learning to communicate, you know, appropriately with uh with teenage girls.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a rough one.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: So just so that the ish part that I'm surviving ish is a tween daughter.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I know maybe you can't relate to that one, but I do think that uh as your new friend, I think we have to learn when and where to use a dad joke.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, right because the toilet humor, I got you.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: I love it, I'm there for it.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: The preteen actually, I don't know a very many younger females that will ever like the toilet humor.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we probably appreciate the toilet humor.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, it's a shame.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: It is, they're missing out.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's so much fun, and they get all like embarrassed and like it smells bad or me.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: I love a good dad joke.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Do you like the progressive commercials?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Which ones?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: The ones with the where they kind of do what like where the the dude is trying to teach the person how to not become their parents.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like so it's kind of like the dad conversations of like when the ballet brings up the car, he's like, Oh, you brought us the wrong car.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're supposed to have the red corvette, and the dude's like, No, don't tell me.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: The one where he's the guy's putting the groceries in the bag, and he's like, We gotta make sure you put the heavy stuff.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: You don't work here, you don't just let them do it.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, those are my favorite.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: I love a good dad joke.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: People's always laughed about the way that I tell jokes, and it's almost become a way that I do it now just for that reason, but it just happened authentically.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: But it's how like I'll tell the joke and I'll say the punchline, and then I'll immediately start to explain it while I'm dying laughing.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Okay, you don't have to explain to us why the fish hit the wall, you know.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we get it, and so now it's like, are you laughing at me because I'm laughing and you're laughing at me for laughing, or are you laughing at me because the joke is fun?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Are you laughing with me?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are we doing here?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: It all just becomes a soup of laughter at some either way, we're laughing.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: With you, are you and at this point?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows what's happening?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take it as long as I'm laughing too.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take it.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: We'll have a good time.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, okay, so to get us into like a little bit of the deeper side of things, I would love for you to maybe give us some cliff notes for anyone who either hasn't listened to Unholier and and knows your background, or maybe has listened to your episode Unholier, but once we're a fresher on you and your background with what led you to Unholier, what was a religious trauma that led you to your writing?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, give us some cliff notes on who you are in your background.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I was raised uh in a Christian family, but not just um like Jenny, she was raised like in a Christian family, but I was kind of divided up because my mother was much more charismatic and Pentecostal in her Christianity, like speaking in tongues and doing all that kind of stuff.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And my father was much more conservative, you know, Southern Baptist and King James version of the Bible only.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And people who are going through a deconstruction process will know exactly what I'm talking about.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: But most people grew up in one of those camps, and I kind of grew up in both.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it was always hard for me to reconcile the two because they're just very, very different.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a profound experience in nine.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the Air Force and I got sent to Iraq.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was my second deployment in Iraq.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And when I left for Iraq, beginning in 2009, I had a wife and kids, and a golden retriever, and a German Shepherd, and a minivan, and a sedan, and a four-boot-bedroom house with an attached garage and a nice little cul-de-sac.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was like, you know, I was on the worship team and I taught Bible studies.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was I was 100% that guy.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in February of February of 2010, all of that was gone.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I still had the minivan, and I was living in a crappy efficiency apartment in New Jersey with a duffel bag of military clothes, a duffel bag of civilian clothes, and my bicycle.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that was all I had.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had lost everything, including my faith.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I it had already my my faith had already been kind of crumbling by, you know, death by a thousand wounds anyway.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing that really rocked my world is that I was on a convoy during Ramadan, and our translator was a devout Muslim, and they offered him some water, and he wouldn't take it because during uh Ramadan, they don't consume anything during the day while the sun is up.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that was fascinating to me.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I was still a Bible-believing Christian, and I thought that it was my duty to convert this poor heathen unbeliever to Christianity.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were on a six-hour convoy and one way, and we ended up just debating back and forth between Islam and Christianity, and because I knew Islam really well, I knew Islam as he as well as he knew Christianity, and the thing is like what struck me towards the end of that is that like neither one of us had been able to convert the other.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a few things that he said during that whole conversation that really mastered my head, and one of them was that he kept talking about how Allah would answer his prayers, and that has stuck with me ever since.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because in the Christian world, when people talk about answers to prayers, you know, they pray and they'll say that God either says yes, no, or wait.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And when I said it as a Christian, it made sense.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: But when he said it as a Muslim, I thought, well, your God isn't real, that's just random chance.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're just talking about random chance there.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: But then I was like, oh crap, well, we say the same thing.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, well, maybe my God isn't any more real than his God.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that was when I finally, like, everything just kind of like that was the final grenade that blew up the foundation of my my faith.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it was shortly after that that um you know my wife said that she wanted a divorce, and you know, she wanted to move to Pittsburgh, and I got worse to New Jersey, and just like everything completely fell apart.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: But what that did though is it started me on a journey to try and reconstruct my faith.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And what I noticed, and why that why that phrase stuck with me is that you know, sometimes God's answer to prayer is either yes, no, or wait.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems like random chance, but I had noticed that there were some people that got what appeared to be answers to prayer and consistently, but some people didn't.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm an analytical kind of guy, so I started research and I started learning about uh the law of attraction and psychology and sociology, and I started uh studying uh Neville Goddard and uh Florence Scovel Shin and Wayne Dyer and just like doing very, very deep dives into all these things to try and figure out why some people get answers to prayer while some people don't.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because it it had nothing to do with your religion, has nothing to do with your faith.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because it'd seen atheists and Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims and Christians, Catholics, Latter-day Saints, like everybody, had had something that seemed like an answer to prayer, and some people were more consistent.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so but through that whole process, what I found in the end, and that's ultimately like what the conclusions that I came to are what I write about in this book in a little while.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that that metaphor, people say that God is like imagine an elephant in every religion is like a blind man who's like holding onto one part of the elephant, and they'll say, Well, God is like they'll feel the leg and say, Well, God is like a tree, or they'll fold the tail and say, Well, God is like uh a rope, and every blind man has their own thing.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of atheists will say, Well, then they're all idiots because they don't know what it is.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: But what I think is like, well, if you step back far enough, there's an elephant there, like there's something there, like there's something that's happening.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And um what I came back to uh ultimately is especially through studying uh law of attraction and manifestation, is going back to the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, especially the Gospel of uh Matthew and the Gospel of Thomas, and completely seeing those in a different light altogether, and realizing that the message that was really there the whole time is to realize that you cannot be disconnected from God, and it doesn't matter what church you go to and what wafer you eat from which person wearing the right funny hat.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like none of that has anything to do with it.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: It all has to do with looking within and realizing that the kingdom of heaven is within you, which is a whole other crazy concept to unpack.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I mean that's that's kind of a long cliff notes version, but the it's those ideas that I I've come across are the things that I write about in my books.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and I really appreciate and I've heard it before, but I'd kind of forgotten about it until you mentioned it, but the whole like elephant analogy.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I I love that reminder, and it just started making me think of so many things.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I want to ask you do you believe in God now?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Do you believe in the King James Version Bible now?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is that is that your guidance and and path in life?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where do you stand now?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big question, man.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is a yeah, and we can put a pin in it or not answer at all.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let it alone.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think that's a very good question.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the Bible to me, and I know a lot of people will find this offensive, maybe maybe not your listeners so much, but I used to see the Bible as the inerrant word of God, like it was divinely inspired and it was a completely authoritative, but now I've come to see it as a record of the evolution of human psychology, and I've come to see I've actually come to a really uh terrifying place for me and for humanity because I've come to the point where I realize that it's us, we're responsible, we have to be the adults in the room.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's nobody coming back to save us, there's no external deity, there's not like it's not a thing.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's other things that we can do.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's like ours, not like magical powers, not like Lord Voldemort powers, but there are capabilities that humans have that we haven't tapped into.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that there's anything outside of us that's coming to save us.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's the this book, uh, In a Little While is based on that idea because I wasted a lot of my life, I feel, by thinking all the time about the rapture.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the title of this book comes from a song that's called In a Little While.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea is that it doesn't matter what you do here in life because Jesus is coming back in a little while, and you're gonna go to heaven anyway.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, that leads to this whole in a little while theology where you don't have to take care of the earth, you don't have to take care of your neighbor, you don't have to take care of any of the stuff around us, because Jesus is gonna come back pretty soon anyway.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, what difference does it really make?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Listen in in the song, she says, you know, we're just here to learn how to love God and in a little while we'll be home.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if you forget that part of loving God is learning to love your neighbor, is taking care of your environment, if you forget that, then the whole thing kind of falls apart, you know.
• 21:51
  unknown: Yeah.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: When you were talking earlier and you would you would say, you know, prayers are either answered yes, no, or maybe after.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe later, or maybe what was it?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: You say yes, no more wait.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, no more wait.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so when where you had said that a couple of times when you mentioned your title in a little while, I thought that was kind of based on the yes, no or like wait, because maybe in a little while I can do it.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, like when you go to your mom or dad and you're like, Hey, can I go outside and play?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, No, maybe in a little while, you know.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's kind of what I was thinking.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's not a yes, it's not a no.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's a enough for you to hope and still enough hope to still cling to, which could sometimes set you up for failure.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so I kind of thought your title was a little bit of a play on that.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe when I do the second edition, I'll add that in because it's a really good idea.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I've got it, it's patent right here.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: I got uh 15%.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: So okay, so I wanna I'm gonna it's getting dark.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna move my light real quick.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, yeah.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: A little better.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I can see my face getting like dimmer and dimmer and dimmer because the sun's going down outside.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, you still look great.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: I can still see, yeah.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my daughter was she said I look like a team Brad Pitt.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what like like if somebody was gonna make like a like a cheap knockoff sculpture of a random white dude, and the only reference thing that they had was Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take it.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take it.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say team version of Brad Pitt, I'll take it.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: But when I was serving them bartending like during college year, so 20 years ago, Zach Efron in a high school musical was uh out and popular.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, like when when we would have like the little swish haircut, I had one with like some highlights in it, and people would refer me to Zach Efron.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Timu probably wasn't around then, but if it was, I probably would have been referred to as a Timu Zach Efron.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take it as a compliment.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like devastatingly handsome from certain angles.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: The du maybe I should turn my lights down a little bit.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: So okay, you had we we were you were talking about when you were speaking with the uh your friend who was Muslim and kind of comparing the religions, and you hadn't said the word converted, like you it's almost like your old goals were to try to convert each other in some kind of way.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: What I find very interesting is there are some religions that are all about trying to convert people, and that's their goal.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I've just never been able to wrap my mind around, even when I was a believer, how it is someone else's business or responsibility to get me and and how like converting gets assigned to gay people a lot.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, Oh, you're gonna convert me to be a drag queen, or convert me to be gay, or convert me or my child.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And could you imagine if me and two or three of my gay friends came and knocked door to door in your neighborhood and said, Have you met the gays?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Let me show you the way to the gays.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Could you imagine?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: But yet, Christianity, uh, you know, it it's very it's somehow allowed.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: And and but that have you ever thought of it that way?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like, could you imagine if I came and knocked on a door and said, Let me show you the way to the rainbow, I would probably get shot.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen the movie, the show Um Ted?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Coach Ted Lasso.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, oh, that's not a great show.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, there's a character in there, and she uh was saying that her dad went to school with Braddie Marcury, and she says that like beyond his musical career, his greatest talent was actually flipping strings.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, I don't know if that's true or not, but I thought it was Virgin reminded me that like it's not that hard, it's a whole different podcast, but I'm willing to have it with because because I think what happens is, and this might well no, I think this is still kind of on subject.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think what happens is is a lot of religions, and I want to base what I say off of Christianity because that that's what I know of most, right?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, is everything is in a box, it has to be sex is is only to reproduce, and it's between a man and a woman, and and then it leads into societal stuff that is like if you sleep with a man, you're gay.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so let me ask you this.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: If your brother, hypothetical brother, came to you and said, I had a sexual encounter with a man last night, in most cases, people's response would be like, Oh, well, you're you're maybe you're gay.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: You should maybe explore that you're gay, or not even that of okay, you're gay, you're queer, whatever.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: But if I went to a straight person and I said, I went out with a girlfriend last night, we had a couple drinks, and I woke up and I had to sit all night with her and come to find out we had sex.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Would a straight person's response be like, Oh, you've been straight this whole time.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: You're straight.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: I knew you were straight.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so, so what so I don't think that would be the case.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like if a straight man had an encounter with me, he's automatically the F slur.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: But if I had a straight encounter with a female, then I'm confused or I I'm, you know, like there's some kind of there's some kind of something that leads it to where no one would ever say, Well, you're a closet case heterosexual.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: I would never be called straight.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that just gets so confusing.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think what makes me gay is the fact that I want to have a marriage at home and a family and a life with a man.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: My preference is a man.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Can I say that I'm never going to sleep with a woman?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: But but can I say that I'm probably never going to find a woman that I could fully love 100% and spend the rest of my life with and love her and be faithful and and and not have thoughts and doubts and shoulda, coulda, woulda's in my head?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I can with a man.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: I know that I can find one man and have that.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that like, I think that where this kind of plays into the religion is we are taught that mostly women are to save themselves for marriage.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: Men can do whatever they want.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Women should save themselves for marriage.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: And and then, you know, then we have if you get divorced, you're frowned upon.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you get pregnant before marriage, you're frowned upon.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you do all these things, which usually lands into a woman's lap of, you know, like if a man cheats, it's because the woman wore her shirt too low cut, the man gets a free pass.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's all these things that we put into these fear tactics, into these fear mongering, and it's where religion has just become a weapon, in my opinion, to control people and to manipulate people, and um probably word salading and throwing out all kinds of shit that probably don't even make sense right now.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: But there's just so much I had to say about it, and none of it, in my opinion, led to what God and religion should be.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why I one of the things that I also wanted to mention that you had talked about is when I decided that I don't believe in God anymore.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to follow that.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: I I identify as an atheist.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: You were talking about some prayers are answered, some prayers aren't, and some prayers are ask me in a minute, right?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the best few years of my life, I've had the prayers I have prayed about for so long that were never answered.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: When I let go of religion, when I let go of that pressure, when I let go of people telling me what I should do with my money, how I should do it, what I should do with my body parts, who I should kiss, when I should kiss them.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: When I let go of all those things, everything in my life prospered.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: My love for other people, my passion for other people, my my my commitment, my bank account, and and I'm gonna lie, even the materialistic things, but I busted my ass for those, and I would get so mad and so offended that people want to say, Well, you have this because of God.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I woke up at eight o'clock in the morning and 10 o'clock.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: Why does he get the credit?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_03: Right, yeah.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was so pissed, and I was done with giving something that I wasn't even sure existed all this credit for the shit that I busted my ass for.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then it when I let go of that, everything prospered for me.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, and that's our show for the day doing it next week.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: I just like, yeah, there's like many it was a lot.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, I got like five new book ideas out of the you hardly hear I'm recording.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's there's a couple big things that I keyed in on there.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, there's so much.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing that I wanted to talk about is the um I think that men in the Christian church are largely misunderstood, uh, because there's a lot of women who come on and they talk about like legitimate sexual trauma that they've experienced, and like like honest to God, objective sexual you know, repression and trauma, and all of those things are true.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I in no way want to minimize that or take away from it whatsoever.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but what I'll add to that is to say that having grown up in the church, men experience the same kind of thing.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's almost like they they take the girls to one room and they teach them one thing and then they take the guys to another room and teach them a whole different thing.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I will say that you know, men do get the benefit of the doubt a lot, most of the time.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I I think that for me, for example, when I had my first sexual relationship, it was with somebody who wasn't in the church, and my father was furious with that because of that, because sex outside of marriage is a sin to him, and it actually led me, like I was so riddled with guilt that I'd had sex with this girl that I felt duty bound, I felt obligated to marry her, or else I was gonna be living in sin and God would not bless me, and my life would be in shambles all the time.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I ended up marrying her, the first person that I had sex with.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: That was a terrible idea for both of us.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that it's a lot harder for men in the church than people usually acknowledge because not a lot of men talk about it.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: There aren't a lot of men coming out of the church and saying, Yeah, it was difficult for me.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like I had these kind of relationships, I had these kind of desires.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: I had maybe the guys that are, you know, they're conflicted about their sexuality, or there's like women that would like to be in relationships with, or you know, they got into a marriage too early, like I did.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: And like me, like I brought kids into the world because I was so convinced I so I believed in marriage so much, and I didn't want to be living a life with sin that I'm I married this woman and we had two kids together, and I thought we were gonna try and make it work, but it was like military life and alcoholism from both of us, and it all just fell apart.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so now the kids suffer for that.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: And hindsight being what it is, I I think if I could go back and counsel my younger self, I'd say, she's cool, have fun, but make sure you wrap her mate because you don't want to but also don't be guilty about it, you'll be fine.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's experiment and learn.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: But you need like I had my own healing to do, I had my own healing journey.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that I one of the books that I'm working on now, and it's the one I procrastinate on because it's big.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: I call it um The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb is the working title.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the idea that in it I talk about how nobody talks about male sexuality in an honest way.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: When I was doing some research on it, what I learned is that there isn't a single book anywhere in all of human history ever that talks about healthy male, heterosexual sexuality and what men need emotionally, like our emotional desires, the things that we're after, the things that we're interested in.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody anywhere has ever talked about it.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's libraries of books about homosexuality, there's libraries of books of women's sexuality, there's libraries of books about how to get a boner and how to get a late, but nobody has ever written a book about like how what is it that I'm expecting from this woman?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: What like what am I trying to get from this relationship?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: And nobody's ever really taught about it, you know.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think that is?
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: I almost said something cynical.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's something I'm working on too, is being less cynical.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: The cynical thing is that nobody cares because and I think that comes from the fact that men to tend to be so much more stoic, and we are willing, and I think it's part of our nature.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: I talked about it a little bit in the book too, but like there's this aspect of masculinity where there's almost like honor in suffering in order to support somebody else, yeah.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think a lot of men, most men, just suffer in silence.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can't I cannot tell you the number of men who live in marriages who are just like insanely jealous of these young guys that are just like chasing tail and laying pipe all the time, who are in physical pain, but they can't stop because they've got bills to pay who want to be able to share it.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: This one thing I was thinking about earlier today is that like it's ironic that our homophobia as a nation in the West and in cultures going back too, but particularly in the West, our homophobia has is what has led to health suicide rates and more depression and more and a rise in homosexuality too, and a rise in battered women.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's like there's no nothing good comes from homophobia, like put that there.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is like the thing I was kind of marveling at is that one thing I want to talk about tonight too is that in the um in the Bible in the Old Testament, there's a story of David and Jonathan.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Are you familiar with that?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so a lot of people use this and they'll say, Well, that was a there must have been a sexual relationship, they must have been gay, right?
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is like the word in the Hebrew that talks about their relationship is it means like a romantic relationship.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I think in the West we've so flattened that term that we've taken romance and and sex and made it the same thing, and we've forgotten that two men can have like intensely deep, meaningful, loving relationships with each other and not be gay.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just because I shouldn't use me as an example because I'm gay, but if a straight man cries in front of me, and even if I like hug him and show him compassion, that does not mean that we're phoning in a few minutes, you know.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and but even in the email correspondence that you and I had shared, I had said to you how men need to talk about these things.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I even when when this platform, when I started my platform, I thought it was gonna be women and gay men.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's more men, more straight men that listen, according to my demographic uh analytics, than I ever even imagined.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had so many straight men come on to to my show and and share their story.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I think what happens is I think that, and forgive me on how I say this, because I don't know if I want to use the words correctly, so we might have to say it and then modify it a little bit, but I think that where there's so much stigma that comes with things that the minute that men try to say, you know what, I was a victim to, then that's us trying to say that, or I shouldn't say us, that's where maybe straight men, especially the the white demographic of men, is going to be looked down on as if are now trying to play some kind of victimized card, and that it's not genuine.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think I think that fear steers men from coming out and saying certain things and having certain conversations, and which is, you know, we we've seen suicidal rates, we've we've seen the death rates, the heart attack rates, the uh drug abuse and alcohol abuse rates.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's because of these things.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that men are also a victim of religion with being told that you live a certain way, you you there even it's even on the discoveries uh of the belt uh uh from the police officer from when my uh rapist slash attempted murder confess to these things.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: He said, My my bad guy told the cops that I sexually propositioned him, which is why he did what he did.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now in court, he said that was not true, that he but he knew that if he said that it would justify him doing what he did to where the cops would not um what would when would go easy on him.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the cop said, and it's on discovery of the cops saying, Well, it sounds like two men fought it out in the front yard and one of them lost.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because we're supposed to just suppress these things, we're just to bottle them down.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: You if you feel an emotion, you can feel it for a minute, pop open a can of beer, smoke a cigarette with it, and then and then you're done, or or go fight it out in the front yard and see who wins, and then but then it's over.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: And men are absolutely victims of this, which is why I think these conversations are so important to talk about the men's side of things.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry I go on so many tangents.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're hitting all the things, we're hitting all the things I'm just so passionate about.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so my next book that's coming out in June is uh my plan is hopefully if all goes well July 1st, it'll be available.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it's called You Are Forgiven, and it's a look at the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, the whole story of the cross, but without the doctrine and dogma.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I look at it as a as an archetype, and I look at it through a lens of Jungian psychology.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not a psychologist, not a any kind of a psychologist, but I did a lot of research into this to try and understand it, you know.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had to do a lot of shadow work.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're familiar with shadow work, right?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I've had to do a lot of shadow integration work.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: So and I got to know my shadow, and he's a fucking bad motherfucker.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: I love that dude.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he's always got my back, which is the best part.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the concepts that I came across is and you hear about a lot about this in the the law of attraction world, the manifestation, is they'll tell you that the universe is a mirror and it's mirroring back to you what you are, right?
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: And what I've come to understand is that if you humans are metacogni metacognitively advanced, but we are not emotionally cognitively advanced.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: Does it make sense?
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not quite the right word, but the idea is that if you take a baby and you put it in front of a mirror and you put like a little blue sticker on its forehead, the baby will reach up on its own forehead and pull it off, right?
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because it has the metacognition, it has the self-awareness to know that that's a reflection of itself, right?
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think like dolphins and some of the great apes, you know, there's a few other creatures that that can do that like us.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we measure their level of intelligence by their ability to recognize themselves in a mirror.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you take that same mirror and you put it in the woods in front of a bear, maybe you've seen those videos where a bear will just go crazy and destroy the mirror because it doesn't know that it's a reflection of itself.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: So where we go blind is that we are not good at recognizing our emotional reflection in other people and what gets reflected back to us if we haven't done our shadow work, if we haven't done healing, if we're riding around our life with guilt and shame about who we are and all these sorts of things, and we see somebody that reflects those things back to us that we're mad at ourselves about, our tendency is to lash out of that person.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the argument that I make in the book is that when you look at what Jesus is supposed to represent in the gospels as being this like perfect person, this perfect sinless person who like performs miracles and brings people back to life and like feeds thousands of people and heals everybody and stuff like that, right?
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: For me, I would look at Jesus and I would say, and I would see my anger, and I would see my shortcomings, right?
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: I would see all those things about me.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what you see if you look back through history is that anytime a person comes along and folds up a mirror to society and shows them who they really are, they kill them.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happened to.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, pick a prophet, pick a person all over.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you show up a bright enough mirror to humanity that shows them who they are, emotionally.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Emotionally, then they become the bear and they attack, right?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: So now take that idea and like that's transpose that now into homophobia, right?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you look back through the history of homosexuality in the Old Testament, the Roman Empire and the Greek Empire, all this kind of stuff, the pattern that you see is that a lot of these people, some like the desert cultures, they had concerns about like health and that kind of stuff.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: There was like, because they didn't understand microbiology or infectious diseases, they didn't understand that, you know.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, there was in in like the Roman Empire, there they were less worried about somebody's sexuality and more worried about your dominance in the hierarchy.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: So probably you probably know the story.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: I just learned about this the other day.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: That there was um, I'm gonna get the names all wrong, but the story I know is right, is that there was a Roman soldier who his commanding officer was trying to sexually assault, and he pulled out a sword and he killed him.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that commanding officer's uncle was one of like the supreme military leaders for Rome.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of punishing the soldier, he he he gave him a medal.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: He honored him because he hadn't allowed this other person to become the dominant one in the situation, because that was more important to them that you be the dominant person, right?
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, in that context, it wasn't so much it wasn't the the act of homosexuality or the lifestyle of homosexuality.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: What pissed them off was somebody being submissive to somebody else, especially a man being submissive to another man.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, in the this story, is submissive.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I before you use the word submissive, I immediately went to consent, right?
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: One was consensual, and so so is there a difference like in the story and the way that they believed where you can be submissive and it's not frowned upon as long as it's consensual, or is it or are those all separated?
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this this is something I'm focused on the mirror principles.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a historian, but I think that's a really good uh question to ask because I think that and you can probably tell me more about this too, is in the gay community, you got like tops and bottoms.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: That would matter in in any in any relationship, you're gonna have one person who is more masculine energy dominant and one who's more feminine energy dominant.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't matter if they're heterosexual or homosexual, it doesn't matter.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you have two people who are more masculine energy dominant, there's just gonna be too much of a clown.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: And two people who are feminine energy dominant, it's all just gonna turn into chaos and craziness.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, and so I've got an upcoming recording with someone who's like a BDSM expert.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that she had mentioned is that people think that the submissive one is the I'm probably gonna butcher how she says it, but is the one in less in control.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: But the submissive one is actually the one that's in more of control because they are telling the dominant one what they will allow to be done to them, they are letting the dominant one do be dominant, which shows their power, their submissive power over the dominants.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and I was like, oh, you know, because we hear these words, right?
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we get stuck in this black and white, you know, it's you hear submissive and you're especially if you think of like a submissive man, you think of someone that like like people want to put that with me, right?
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because I have a more I'm a smaller guy, I have more of like a feminine side to me.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: I take all that as a compliment.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, before many years ago, I'd have been like, no, fuck you, and try to like hunt my chest out now.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: It is what it is, and I love it about me now, you know what I mean?
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: But that does not make me less than.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so we want to assign these words, like when you think of like alpha and beta, we want to assign these with one is better than and less than when in an alpha beta relationship you have two consensual or maybe four consensual, a hundred consensual, doesn't matter.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: You have preferably and always should be adults who have their roles that they're all consensual to, and so you know, it's not this greater than or less than, and I found that very interesting.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is interesting.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think that I can see that too, where someone who if I'm being told to do something to somebody else, then I'm submitting to that, right?
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if if I'm being told to do like that, I wouldn't naturally do, yeah, I'm submitting to myself to their will that I do this thing to their body, it may go against my nature to do that, right?
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that is intrigued.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: Are we writing another book?
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let's stay away away from that one.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm blowing my mind right now.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: I know, but I love these conversations though, because we do we we get stuck in these black and white things and this black and white thinking, yeah.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: But but I think that as I'm learning more about the whole homophobia thing, too.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's like when I get into the mirror principle that I talked about, you know, like I think that there's still some part of and it's inherent within testosterone, too.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: There are people who will say that well, that will say that testosterone makes men more aggressive, but it's not it's not necessarily aggression, it's more dominance, which isn't always the same thing, right?
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: So when you see somebody, so when when somebody who has higher testosterone, like me, I got like the eyebrows and the shoulders and like the beard and like everything like that, right?
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: But if that person hasn't done a lot of soul searching and isn't like in touch and doesn't they've done their shadow work and all this kind of thing, right?
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then what happens with mirror thing is that and I say this too because I mentioned the email that I consider myself a recovering homophobe, right?
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because because I grew up in the church, and 15 years ago I never would have had a conversation with you, right?
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I most of my friends in my life today say the exact same thing.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I would have thrown around the F-word and not even cared, like, get over yourself because I I was that guy, yeah, you know, and when you said to me in the email, um, what was it that you said in the email about?
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was but it was the same kind of thing like that, like somebody said you deserved it or that you had asked for, or something like that.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, when when in court they were trying to say that, and some of the people that were when my story went public, people were saying, Well, you're a gay man, so you can't be raped from another man, because Mike Packer was a good-looking military guy, and in their mind, they think that's the alpha male that everyone is going to want to either be or have sex with.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so, how could I be raped by this man when either the man wants to be them or the female would want to sleep with them, especially if Faggot would love to sleep with them?
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: How could I be raped?
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which is bullshit.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, like, I think what that when I read that, it like it was a punch in the chest for a lot of reasons.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: One is that like when I read it, and like today I hear that, I'm like, oh my god, like how who would say that out loud?
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: But then when punched me for her, is that I realized that 15 years ago, I would have said that.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: You would have said it out loud.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and thought, yeah, so what?
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's gay, so what?
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: But then, but now looking back at that, like having done shadow integration work and having come to see like where all that kind of stuff comes from, I can say that there's a there's a I just mean I said it earlier today, it was actually really good.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: But when you look at the the shadow projection and you think about okay, here's what I said earlier is that if you look at somebody like Freddie Mercury, like we talked about Freddie Mercury earlier, right?
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: Was it in the recording or no?
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: Forget.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think it was.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because it was in the show Ted Lasso and Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: His high big greatest skill is flipping strings.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: The thing is, if you if you think about testosterone, you think about hierarchies and you think about dominance, right?
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you have Ed the transmission mechanic from Scranton, who's maybe like a masculine dude, and you know, but he's not and sorry if there's a guy named Ed out there from Scranton, I'm not picking on you, bruv.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: But there's like trying to come up with a random stereotype.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I came up with.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: But like that guy might look at somebody like Freddie Mercury, for example, and see that Freddie Mercury is higher in the dominance hierarchy, right?
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's got the wealth and he's got the status and he's got the health and he's good looking and he's you know he's doing all that kind of stuff.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: But then he's when if you imagine like if I were to imagine myself in a position like that, I would think of myself somebody more like Gene Simmons, who is like banging girls all over the place.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: But like when you think about Freddie Mercury and he's doing the same thing, but with other men, you're like, ah, we're you know, I can't wrap my head around that.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the thing is though, is that when you go back to the story about the Roman soldier, one of the things that happens in men's minds is that when you see somebody who's higher in the pecking order, higher in the dominance hierarchy, there's a concern that that person will then use that against you for some reason, right?
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so we always say it's gonna have to be defensive against people who are in higher in the pecking order, right?
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when you see somebody like Freddie Mercury and that person's homosexual, the thought becomes oh, the way that person would demonstrate their hierarchy, their their dominance over me is through raping them.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that doesn't, that's not like a logical thing that happens, but when I look in the mirror and do my shadow work and I think about like what's that whole entire emotional process that takes place when I would look at somebody like Freddie Mercury and be mad that he's gay, those are the thought processes that I go through.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like if he saw me, would he rate me?
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: And why isn't he doing that to women?
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: But then at the same time, if I saw somebody like you, I would pick on you for a minute, because you're smaller than me, maybe you're a little more effeminate than me.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if I felt that pressure coming down from Freddie, somebody like Freddie Mercury, I would want to take that and and direct it somewhere else.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm so I'm then demonstrating my dominance on somebody who's smaller and weaker than me.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's but that's what homophobia dumbs.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's what it does.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because you see, you you like see somebody like like Elton John is like, what would Elton John do to me, you know?
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, you know, you'll see somebody like George Michael, who's like an objectively beautiful human being, and then but then you're like, Well, but does that mean I'm gay?
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: Can I think that?
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, ah, you know, and you get all into this, like your brain goes into this like crazy tilt world, bonkers, emotions, and then you then you try to justify it, and then you know, because I remember one of the things they used to say was uh I used to believe that George, you know George Michael, right?
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure, yeah.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like who doesn't?
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like he's amazing, oh right, right.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I I used to say that he wasn't really gay, and it was because I heard an interview with him one time in it's probably the late 80s, early 90s, when he was first doing like the faith tour and you know, just kind of coming into his own.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that he said in the interview was that when he was in high school, he was always just like dramatically good looking.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what he found was that women weren't interested in him as a person, they only wanted him as a status symbol, and they wanted to be with him because he was pretty, and that hurt his heart, you know, and he said that was really hard to deal with.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: But then when he started meeting other gay men, they saw him for who he was, and so and then so he just kind of like went into that community and he led like a like a very, very deep abiding friendship with Elton John and like other people in that whole community because they were like they were welcoming because they got it.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's that camaraderie that we talked about earlier, you know.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: And but me in that the way that he used to think, I would say, well, that means he wasn't really gay.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: He got sucked into that lifestyle.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: Does it make sense?
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I would have to justify the fact, I couldn't accept the fact that maybe that's just who he was, and he had to go through a journey to be able to find people that would make him feel like a whole human being.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like I couldn't accept that in my mind.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sorry to justify it.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's so crazy.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and I'm sure this has been used a million times, and and you and as well as the listeners have probably heard it a million times, but it's like people want to ask me, like, when did I decide to be gay?
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so let me flip that.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, when did you decide that you were straight?
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's the weird thing, though, is that like up until the mid-2000s, that wasn't a question.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I didn't have to go, like, it's just normal, you know what I mean?
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you're the weird one who had to go figure out something different, you know.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I and I don't mean that's a no, that that's the mentality that society has, right?
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I uh we're the weird ones, you know, because we had to figure something out.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: But from the moment we're born, we are taught that it's this way and and we're different.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I know a person that was born without a finger, and they grew up holding their hand and hotting their hand and talking in a certain way to where most people didn't even realize they were missing a finger until you really noticed it.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: And what is so wrong with them missing a finger?
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know something?
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna seem unrelated, but this is very much related.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: So earlier in the conversation, we talked about Abraham Hicks.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: Remember?
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know if we were recording it or not.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about that.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think it might have been before.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was because I I put it on my phone.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, all right.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the thing that Abraham Hicks talks a lot about is the vortex.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're in the the new age community, they'll talk about like raising your vibration and there's things that are in your vortex and all this.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it was waiting, did you say?
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, back.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: Did I talk about this in the recording already or no?
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or was it before the I don't want to repeat too much?
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think we might have talked about it before you hit record.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think it was before, and either way, it's okay.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's we all have ADHD, we all need little reminders.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about a lot of things, like we're good, I promise.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: My listeners were all like following so okay, so the vortex.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: So Abraham Hicks talks about you have to get into your vortex, and every time you have a desire, it goes into your vortex.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I never really understood what that meant, and because I always pictured the vortex as this like weird spinning thing that's up above my head, and when I have a desire, somehow they get up into that somehow, and it just never made any sense to me.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: But what I've come to understand is that we as humans are information processing creatures, right?
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: We take in we take in just billions of bits of information into our subconscious mind, but our our conscious mind only gets a few thousand bits of information.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: I know the numbers are wrong, somebody'll call me on that, but we get the idea it's a it's a ratio and proportionality, is important because I can't possibly pay attention to everything that's going on around me all the time or I'll go nuts, nothing would ever get done.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then some I I think that that's some of what happens in the autism spectrum, too, is that like that part of the filtration system isn't quite there, and just like so much more information comes in than they can process that can kind of become paralyzing, you know, to the brain.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, but either way, when we take in information through our body, through our senses, and there's even like subtle things, like there's more than just like the five senses with there's intuitions and there's other things that that we're taking in through our nervous system that we aren't even always aware of, right?
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: But then we put that information back out, and we put it out in words, in our actions, in our habits, the way that we move in the world and the way that we interact with people and everything like that, right?
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so so the vortex isn't some crazy thing that's spinning around behind you, the vortex is you, it's you taking in information and putting information back out, yeah.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it's always going long stuff.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing is is that you mentioned earlier that when you were finally able to like deeply come to terms with who you are and stop hiding from it and stop being ashamed of it and just say, No, this is me.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's when things in your life start to change, right?
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing is, a lot of that is because the information that comes in before it gets sent back out again gets processed through our paradigm.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that that paradigm, the the lens through which we view the world, is tainted by our our traumas and by our past and by our religious beliefs and by our our self-doubt and our negative limiting thoughts.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like all of those things are part of that filtration system that that information comes through and then goes back up.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing that happens though is that when you can clear that out, and you do like you do forgiveness work and you learn how to forgive yourself and you learn how to clear those things out and you do trauma therapy, and then what starts to happen is that that that information flow through it can become much more natural, and you stop doubting yourself and you start making more decisions that are in alignment with who you are.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's um that's one of the principles that I talk about a lot is the mustard seed principle, where Jesus has that story that he says, if you have faith like that of a mustard seed, then you can tell this mountain to go throw itself in the sea and it will do it.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then the evangelical church they'll tell you that that means that if you just have like a little tiny bit of faith, then that's all you need, and God will make up the rest and do miracles.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not really what it's talking about because it's the what Jesus says is that you have to have faith, faith like that of a mustard seed.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it implies that a mustard seed has some kind of faith, which is weird.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: But if you think about what a mustard seed does, all it ever does for its entire existence is just resonate.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: If there was something that it is like to be a mustard seed, it would be the constant resonance that I am a mustard plant.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's all it would ever think of, right?
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't matter if it you know fell on the ground, it rotted or got blown away or eaten by birds or ground up into a paste and put on my hot dog.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: It would always only ever resonate.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: I am a mustard plant.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: Not I'm a seed, but I'm a mustard plant.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it wouldn't like it wouldn't sit there and wonder, maybe it should have been a lily, or like, well, I think the daffodils are kind of cool.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: Or it wouldn't have wondered if it could have been an oak tree, or would it's mom approved of the colors, would it produce enough seeds?
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, none of that.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: It would only always, only ever resonate.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: I am a mustard plant.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing is, what you learn in the law of attraction community, and and the things that that Jesus talks about is that when you have that clarity in your vortex, when you have that clarity of purpose, that clarity of mind, that singularity of purpose, then you start making decisions from a different decision space.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_00: So there's nothing mystical or magical about you know the law of attraction, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's simply you being more deeply connected to who you are as a person.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you talk about somebody who was raised missing a finger, right?
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that I think of is like that, like me knowing that I was a writer, but being ashamed of it.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't I didn't really want to share my words with the world because people would be mad at me, and that's the same thing as this poor kid covering up her finger, being ashamed that she was born without one, right?
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the same thing with you going on your journey of like, I don't know, did you have a moment where you came out of the closet or like yeah, okay.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, but like there was always this part of you that just you weren't being true to yourself, you you weren't being a mustard seed, you were being something else.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_00: You were a mustard seed that was worried that it wasn't a lily, and when you stop doing, and then then it starts to go.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem too is that it's easy to assume that's always going to be a good thing.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is that some people are psychopaths and some people are sociopaths, so I don't want to get into politics, but there are people on the political stage today who are very true to who they really are, right?
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so that that kind of thing comes out.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the way that you address that is by doing that shadow work because if you haven't embraced that shadow part of yourself, if you haven't embraced the part of you that is a pathological liar and uh that who sexually assaults women and who runs scams all the time, and that's all shadow-ass.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's a that's oppressed, that's suppressed shadow behavior that comes out because you haven't integrated that into your the light side of yourself, and so you start to become that this isn't all just like love and light and wonderfulness all the time, you know.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right, it's a very dangerous thing, and so when it means it can be a dangerous thing, but um, but that's also the reason why so many of these teachings were completely.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: Shut down and suppressed for so long.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because just imagine what would happen if like these kinds of teachings like got into the wrong hands.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's why the the Masons, because the Masons understand this stuff.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's go.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: I can't I'm a Mason, so I can't talk about it.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: But like they like they get this stuff.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you go and read there's a guy named uh Manly P.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hall, and he was a 33rd degree Mason and he wrote about a lot of this stuff and how it works.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I feel I feel comfortable talking about whatever Manly P.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_00: Hall Hall talked about because he already talked about it.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but um, this isn't the kind of skill set and information that should just be like out there for the general public.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, I feel like we're coming into a time period where we can't afford to not have decent people know about us.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because the Jeffrey Epsteins of the world, they know this stuff and they've been doing it for years.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they they practice the dark side of all this, and their shadow side comes out, and we see it.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's yeah, you know, we these skills like these are real skills that get them into political in position of political power and earning money and all this kind of stuff because they're using these kinds of skills without having done their shadow work, without having done their shadow integration, and so all that evilness comes out and just gets vomited out onto the world for the rest of us.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_00: And anyway, but that's a lot of what I talked about.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_00: This book, The Third Path, is the importance of doing that kind of like shadow integration work and fixing yourself, but then also not being shy about this and not letting yourself being limited to like one religion.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I know I feel like I just gave like a whole bunch of thumbnail sketches of like 30 different things.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_01: I know, no, I no, I love it.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_01: I yeah, I was so intrigued with it.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: And okay, as as we're starting to bring this to an end, because obviously, as I mentioned, um, this I think is gonna be an ongoing conversation.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_01: You had mentioned how you like to be guests on podcasts after you being on Jenny's, and then we spent an hour off record, and then now that we're on record, the door is always open whenever you want to uh use my platform and my ears and want to hear what I have to say about things.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: The door is always open.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'll record with you anytime.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_01: I love these conversations.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is exactly what I want this platform to be, where we're just all over the place and we talk about everything that's just all important and they become ongoing conversation.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_01: And my listeners have written in and they tell me how they love, love, love repeated guess.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, cool.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so the door's always open.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: However, that's not me closing out just yet.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: I want to ask you, you you talk about shadow work, and to the listener, I know that you all know a lot about my backlog more than I do.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I feel like I've had a full episode with some expert on shadow work in like the beginning days.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go back and research and see, and if I find it, I want to put in the in the show notes.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_01: If any of like my writer dies know exactly what I'm referring to, tell me which episode it is, and let me put it in.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_01: But we also had some conversations in earlier episodes about like inner child work and how I thought that was just so clinical doctor-es bullshit.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_01: Then I did it, and I was like, oh, I was wrong.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: So so what are your thoughts about inner child and shadow work?
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_01: Are they connected?
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what's your opinion on them?
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_01: Are they is it a what are your thoughts?
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean they they aren't they're connected, but kind of in in there how do you say this?
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a differentiation without a difference kind of thing.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because because the shadow comes from the wounds that you experience in your childhood, and there's also a genetic component to it, too.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's generational trauma that gets passed down, like we know that's a very real thing.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of your shadow integration work is you're able to do it through your the work within your childhood, with your your childhood uh integration work as well.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the shadow is it's um it's also kind of becomes this totally other thing, right?
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and part of understanding it is understanding that and acknowledging the things that the child version of yourself went through.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that uh one of the things that helped me the most with my shadow of integration word is learning to uh love myself radically.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna think how I can condense this down.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I I struggle with suicidal ideation a lot, and and a lot of it comes from PTSD from military service, and a lot of it comes from childhood wounds.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was sexually assaulted also like as a teenager, we didn't even get into that.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And all of that kind of stuff kind of accumulates and feeds into my suicidal ideation, right?
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And for a long time, I would look at uh photographs of myself and just be filled with absolute loathing.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_00: I hated that guy, I fucking hated that guy because everything that's going on in my life right now, all the things that stress me out, that that lead to my suicidal ideations, when I get like overwhelmed, they're all based on decisions that that motherfucker did when he was drunk, when he was deployed, when he was worried more about money than he was about his family, when he was making bad decisions, when he was chasing tail, like he was fucking crazy, that guy.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And now I gotta live the consequences of his fucking decisions, right?
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_00: But then one day I had started doing like childhood healing work, and I spent a lot of time.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was in therapy and I kind of figured this stuff on my own too.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_00: But then I worked with a therapist, and I would highly encourage anybody to do this.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Do work with a therapist.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a little bit bonkers and I take risks that I shouldn't have.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So if I say to do like I did something, don't necessarily think that's a great idea.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've talked to my therapist and psychiatrist about the things that I've done, and they're like, You did that alone?
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I've made some serious mistakes that caused me some serious problems.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_00: So let me give that as a caveat too.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, what I would do is I would imagine that younger version of myself as a child, you know, when he was dealing with his stepmom, you know, who was being abusive, and he was dealing with, you know, his mother had left.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't know how to process that kind of thing.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I would spend hours, I'd be like driving on the road, and I would just imagine that like little Sean is just sitting right next to me, and I would just listen to him, and I would hold his hand.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I would just let him sit in my lap and I would just like stroke his hair, you know, just like in my imagination, like all the things that I wish that my dad could or would have done.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I gave that tenderness to myself, and that became really important to me.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_00: But then one day I was looking at a photograph of myself, and I was in my military uniform, and I was like had my stripes and the ribbons, you know, and I looked at myself and the hatred was gone because I saw him and I knew what he was stressed out about, and I knew what he was carrying, and I knew what he was worried about, and I knew why he was drinking, because I had already started my own sobriety journey, and I started to see him in a different light as made every decision when he did it because he thought it was the best thing that he could do.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And there are some things in my life that are really, really good right now because of decisions that he made.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to take the good and the bad.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened is I ended up just completely falling in love with that guy, and he became my best friend.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I fucking love that dude now.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I would just I would do anything for it, I get all emotional about it.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_00: But then, check this out this is the cool thing.
• 1:14:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you keep taking that, you can look into the future too, which is that's the most amazing.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, some of the best conversations I have with myself are the version of me that's on his deathbed, and I'll ask that guy, what do you want me to do today?
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_00: How like like I'm in the situation, I'm not sure what to do.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what what do you think?
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in the Christian world, I used to save that for Jesus, but you know, like Jesus became a human so he could identify with people.
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_00: But what the fuck does Jesus know about Wi-Fi?
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right, well, like what does he know about like the modern world?
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, he's God and he understands stuff, but like he doesn't know like my life, and people will tell me that I'm being blasphemous, but it's like he lived 2,000 years ago, it's a different world, can't identify.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know who can identify with me?
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Me in the future, and and if I love my past self this much, imagine how much more the future version of me is gonna love me.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what's crazy though is that when I ask him, he wants me to eat um, he really wants me to have more turkey hoagies, he wants me to write a couple of novels, and he wants me to have as much sex with Kelly as I possibly can.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's really all he cares about.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love yeah, so it's like and it's like as long as I'm being loving, as long as I'm trying to make the best decision that I can, because I love him too.
• 1:15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Every decision that I make right now is I'm I'm taking care of him and I'm maintaining that relationship with myself.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens is that you end up becoming your own best friend across the whole span of your lifetime, and there's no great like is can there be a greater love than that, honestly, than to like truly, deeply, radically love yourself.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that comes after you've done forgiveness, and that comes after you've got a shadow work, and that comes after you've accepted who you are, and you just start to say, Okay, this is who I am right here, right now, in this moment, because this is all I've got.
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, might as well just absolutely love myself right now.
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's such a great reminder.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_01: It reminds me of when I started doing like really getting in touch with like some of the inner child work that I'd and I started noticing that there were times when, and when I use the closet terminology, I'm not meaning it the gay closet, but I would be like, I could tell with the moments that you know little David was poking out of the closet.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Little David would step one foot out of the closet, you know, and and times that he would run back in, and it just really helped me in in so many ways.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, I'd had a traumatic experiences growing up.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_01: My big T, my big trauma happened 10 years ago.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was uh 34 years old when it happened.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_01: I had healthy consensual sex, I knew what those things were, but one night changed my whole definition of sex.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_01: My one night changed all these things, and so when when I tried to have sex again after it, my definition changed.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_01: And and so when I started getting into therapy, I'd started doing EMDR.
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then I started learning things about why there was an inner child little David in a closet somewhere because there were things I'd suppressed, things I'd forgotten about.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I was starting to figure learn those things through EMDR at a time that I was trying to focus on a bigger uh on a on a I shouldn't say bigger, but on a more current T that I was like, oh, shut down.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Can't do that right now.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_01: I need I can't I can't focus on that trauma right now and then visit that kid.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to put him back in the closet and it became this whole cycle, you know.
• 1:17:51
  SPEAKER_01: But luckily I got into a place where I was able to, you know, with with a therapist, start to utilize these things that got me into some shadow work and and things like that.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and yeah, not too long ago, if it was a Friday night and I was home alone, I would think that I was worthless.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_01: I would think that I what was no good because it's Friday night.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_01: We all got paid.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Why would someone not want to hang out with me?
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I would think that obviously I'm not a good person because no one wants to be around me.
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_01: I will pay money to be home alone on a Friday night with just myself and I'm sure and I love it, you know it it's amazing that what when yeah, because we we it it sounds like such a cliche, right?
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Just love yourself, but it it's it's the most powerful tool that I have in my tool belt.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember the day that I could say, you know what?
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm and did away with the word love.
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_01: We I didn't need to go from zero to a hundred because I hated myself after my attack.
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Someone saw I walked into a room and someone saw me and they wanted me dead.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's how horrible I am.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because I want to internalize all those things, right?
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's how ugly I am, that's how horrible I am, that's how god-awful my voice is, that's how gay I am, and that's how unworthy of breathing the same air with people that I am.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_01: That someone risked their freedom.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_01: He was a father, he had you know a fiance risk going to prison and not seeing his children because I deserve to be dead.
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like, that's what I interpret, right?
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I and then people are like, Well, you need to love yourself, you need to love yourself.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lot of pressure.
• 1:19:36
  SPEAKER_01: If I went on a date with Sundu, and it's not if I was having a first date with someone and he said, When you love me, I need you to love me, can you love me tomorrow?
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm probably not gonna call him the next day, you know?
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And like, can I maybe like you first?
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Can I maybe have a crush on you first?
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so those are the steps I started taking myself.
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_01: I did away with the with the love word.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to just I wanted to tolerate myself first, then I wanted to have a little bit of a crush on myself first, then I wanted to like myself.
• 1:20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And during that time, I fell in love with myself, and it's because I had to put the word love out here and and let that be something that I get to and not something that I have to wake up having.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm just I I don't know how, I don't know if it just happened if we all think this way, but I thought that if I don't love myself, then I'm awful, and because I can't say that I love myself, and because I can't find that switch and be like, oh wait, now I love myself, then I'm not what so there was a lot of pressure on the word love and a lot of pressure on me to love me when I didn't even like myself yet, because in my truth, my whole world changed that day, and I had to get to re-know me and redevelop me and redefine me.
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you want me to love me when I don't even know what the fuck me is?
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let me get to know me first, let me like me first.
• 1:20:52
  SPEAKER_01: And once I did away with the word love, I fell in love with myself before I even freaking knew it.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And now I can tell you, and I will not edit this out.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I fucking love me.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_01: I am my best friend.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_01: I want a Friday night to be home alone, listening to the new Rebus song that just came out that I already know by heart.
• 1:21:09
  SPEAKER_01: That I fucking I want to sing it a hundred times, and you know, and and I it's okay if my phone doesn't ring.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's my journey.
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Just meditation trip, just me, just being with me.
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_01: However, I will say a lot of the true crumbs stuff I watch, that's the beginning of a horrific story.
• 1:21:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to have a good plan in place because I want you to have that.
• 1:21:35
  SPEAKER_01: However, that's also true.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_00: So here's a question that I was kind of formulating in my mind is as I was listening to you, listening to your journey, question came to me that as we talked about earlier, in the western cultures, we tend to flatten love, like brotherly love and fraternal love and romantic love with sexuality, flatten those kinds of things.
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if I'm totally speculating, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I wonder if some of your hangout might have been because you're gay, and so when I think about loving myself like the past version of myself, it's just like a dude that I know who like like somebody I deployed with, and there's that camaraderie, and I I can easily say that I love him, but there's also like I don't have any homosexual tension, so I wonder I'm totally thinking out loud, if there might be some other dynamic there where gay men would look back on a past version of themselves, especially after having gone through the painful journey of coming out of the closet and maybe experience sexual trauma and all that kind of stuff if there isn't an additional sexual dynamic on top of that, that you then have to kind of pull it apart and move that aside so that you can go to the heart of the individual person.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_00: 100% speculating.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, no, I I totally get that.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that played the biggest percentage of things, but I could see how it did for me a little bit and how it definitely could for other people, depending on where they are in their life with accepting who they are.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think that we just naturally get indoctrinated into things, right?
• 1:23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like we we naturally get groomed into things like most of us know what side of the sidewalk to walk on.
• 1:23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Most of us know that the right lane means you need to be passing traffic or get the fuck out of my way so I can pass you.
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like some of us just naturally know that these societal things that would take a lot to deconstruct from.
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know that you could, and I could be wrong with this, but I don't know that anyone can fully be deconstructed, or if there's still gonna be those triggers.
• 1:23:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that, but I do think that when that happened to me, there was a trigger inside of me.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_01: So something inside me that was triggered that was like, is this the universe telling me that?
• 1:24:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we try to tell you the person at the grocery store, the person at church, the preacher, the choir, we all try to tell you, and now it's taken this to happen to try to shake you, to tell you that quit being gay, motherfucker.
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like quit being quit quit being this person.
• 1:24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now look what's happened because the next thing that's gonna happen is you that this is your second chance to fix yourself because you're broken, because you're gay.
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, I absolutely had those thoughts.
• 1:24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so that led into like, how can I love me when society doesn't love me?
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and the core of that is me being gay.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I I absolutely I think that you were 100% onto something if I understood what you were saying correctly and answered it correctly.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think you yeah, okay, then yeah, absolutely.
• 1:24:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think that 100% played a factor.
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Luckily, I was in a place in my life to where that was short-lived.
• 1:24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there but sometimes I still have to like remind myself.
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think that one of the things that has given me more a lot more compassion towards the the gay community, the whole LG plus community, is that I that idea of shadow repression.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was learning about gay history, I hadn't realized this until recently that after World War II, a lot of guys who came back who were gay couldn't get any VA support, and they they there was a lot of benefits they couldn't get because they were gay.
• 1:25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that is one of the factors that led to there being larger gay populations in pork towns, like in San Francisco and Boston and those kinds of places, because those guys just got stuck there when they got back from the war, there was nowhere else for them to go.
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And what I have wondered about a lot is I know back in the um like the 70s, the 60s and 70s, uh San Francisco is just notorious for just some really rough, like shadowy homosexual behaviors.
• 1:26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there was there was a lot of damage that came out of that for a lot of people.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people enjoyed it too.
• 1:26:12
  SPEAKER_00: But what I have wondered about is when we as a society suppress a shadow aspect of ourselves when you do it as an individual or when we do it as a collective, when you suppress a shadow version of yourself, it bleeds out in bad ways.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, this my book, The Third Path, I talk about the suppressed shadow side of the divine feminine and how that bleeds out into like third wave feminism and like some of those things that are just like you hear it and you're like, Oh, that's weird.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Then they can be damaging, but the thing is like it comes out of that suppressed shadow side of ourselves rather than integrating it.
• 1:26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it makes me wonder like when you have a society that's homophobic, and you start to suppress that, and you're like, Well, let's keep the gay people in San Francisco and let's keep them in that one neighborhood over there in Boston, and let's keep them in Miami where they can just kind of do their thing down there, and you don't ever let it out, then that kind of thing starts to like it bleeds out in unhealthy ways.
• 1:27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's the reason actually why I've become a stronger advocate for gay marriage, because the the more you can let people come out and make who they are, the less those shadow aspects come out.
• 1:27:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that I would argue that like the more that happens, the more mainstream that becomes.
• 1:27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's gotta be like an upswing because pen pendulums swing all the time, but I think eventually it'll correct itself.
• 1:27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the people who like, this is who I am, this is the life that I want to live, and all this kind of stuff.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of that shadow aspects will start to go away, and people will be able to live healthier lives as a whole.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_00: As integrated people and communities.
• 1:28:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I know a lot of people are going to hate the fact that I said that out loud.
• 1:28:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but it but you know, but you're 100% correct.
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and then that's what we've always done.
• 1:28:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when you think of like when when African-American black people got the rights to vote, then they wanted to uh win when they when they were given freedom.
• 1:28:19
  SPEAKER_01: We now put them in uh designated areas that are called projects, and you know, like all this stupid racist shit, you know, we do that with like you were saying, with the gay community.
• 1:28:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and what I don't think that people are really well, I don't think a certain group of people are realizing in today's world, and like and like we discussed, we're not we're not gonna get too political with it, but even when we think about like what they're trying to do with voter suppression right now, I can't tell you how many women have contact to me that are friends of mine that are single, that are like, David, we're about to have to get married, because if I lose my voter rights, I'm gonna marry you because we're gonna be we're gonna be safe together.
• 1:28:59
  SPEAKER_01: And if your vote is gonna have to account for this whole household because I can't vote, at least I know that you're gonna vote for me.
• 1:29:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so, what I want to tell these straight men out there is the best thing that could have ever happened to you is the fact that people like me are gay because your women will come to me because I'm safe, they want to divorce your ass and marry me because I want to vote for them and their rights and uh and they're safe with it.
• 1:29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Don't don't don't don't say that, don't say that they're gonna come at you hard now.
• 1:29:28
  SPEAKER_00: You like oh, really?
• 1:29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them make a lot more money than I do, so come on, ladies, bring it.
• 1:29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Especially if you've been married for a while and you're gonna get alimony, so yes, bring it.
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Go for it.
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so Sean, I know this might be backtracking a little bit, but I like to always try to end on something kind of funny.
• 1:29:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so as we're bringing this to an end, here's the funny thing that I want to say, but it also I think has some weight behind it that I would like for people to maybe put in their back pocket.
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And this is mostly for people who are homophobic or or still in the woods with it.
• 1:30:05
  SPEAKER_01: As a gay man, if I go to a straight party, a straight bar, anything like that, if I get told by a straight guy that, hey, I'm cool that you're gay, just don't hit on me.
• 1:30:21
  SPEAKER_01: I know within 15 minutes we're gonna be making out.
• 1:30:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I want everyone to keep that in the back of their pocket before you tell a straight guy or before you tell the gay boy that I'm cool that you're gay, just don't hit on me.
• 1:30:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you we're gonna be making out.
• 1:30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because that's that's a challenge, right?
• 1:30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and because it's because you've already thought about it, because odds are I hadn't thought about kissing you, I hadn't thought about hitting on you, I hadn't thought nothing about you.
• 1:30:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I didn't, I didn't.
• 1:30:52
  SPEAKER_00: If not you, the the general yeah, but it's it's like I mean, but that's one-on-one.
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you want to get a girl in bed, like you gotta get her thinking about so you got to be able to do it.
• 1:31:01
  SPEAKER_01: But it but uh the the minute because usually when a guy tells me that I'm cool that you're gay, just don't hit on me.
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's him trying to show his alpha, it's him trying to show his dominance, it's him trying to prove that he's heterosexual, um and then I end up being alpha because I and you end up kissing me.
• 1:31:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's a challenge.
• 1:31:22
  SPEAKER_01: So there's so there, so there's that.
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, honestly, I doubt a lot of homophobic people watch this show, so it's probably not anything that anyone um that listens to us has to put in their back pocket.
• 1:31:32
  SPEAKER_01: But tell all your friends, share this episode with your own.
• 1:31:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you say guinea guy and you really want to make out with them, this is what you're doing.
• 1:31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Works every time.
• 1:31:40
  SPEAKER_01: I because a friend told me.
• 1:31:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, this is what rumor has it.
• 1:31:45
  SPEAKER_00: I guess the same thing works for women too.
• 1:31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, if uh if a woman I just picture myself as you're talking, like if a girl came up to me and said, Don't flirt with me, I'd be like, I'd be fucking her that night.
• 1:31:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's right, yeah.
• 1:31:58
  SPEAKER_01: I could I could because it's on the flip side of that, like when I'm talking to a straight dude and he mentions nothing about it, not an issue, it's not a thing.
• 1:32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, but and I think that's a lot of just like just when you see that somebody just sees you for who you are.
• 1:32:12
  unknown: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like if I'm not trying to get any sexual interaction, because I'm very, very happily married, so I don't talk to women about those kinds of things because I don't want there to be weird mixed signals or anything like that, you know.
• 1:32:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a thing, like you're not thinking about it.
• 1:32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And but then also with with women too, like what I've found is uh I have to be very careful because I do tend to be more emotionally open and engaging in conversation and stuff like that.
• 1:32:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's actually one of the reasons why I don't do podcasts is because I've had situations where I had women on and have these engaging conversations, and then they wanted to continue the conversation afterwards, and I'm like, that was a show, like we're ding, and that gets really awkward for me, you know.
• 1:33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's yeah, you gotta be careful with that kind of thing.
• 1:33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you found the perfect podcast to be a regular guest on because right, we're probably not gonna make out, we're probably not gonna probably happen.
• 1:33:17
  SPEAKER_01: However, in the next few weeks, if you record me again, you may be in one of my merch shirts.
• 1:33:26
  SPEAKER_01: But that's probably as far as we'll go.
• 1:33:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 1:33:28
  SPEAKER_00: I can live with that.
• 1:33:29
  SPEAKER_01: You can have my you can have my name on your little right here.
• 1:33:32
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be fine.
• 1:33:33
  SPEAKER_00: David, I'll put David Keck on my shirt.
• 1:33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll make the I promise I won't make the E look like an O.
• 1:33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:33:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you can be surviving David-ish.
• 1:33:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um my gosh, this I I can't wait, but I know that this recording obviously isn't coming out tonight, but uh, but tomorrow night, me, you, and Jenny from Unholier is doing a live together on TikTok, which I'm so excited about.
• 1:33:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, even though the show won't be out, all my listeners are already getting updated about it because I do have some Rider Dyes, they're amazing.
• 1:34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've enjoyed this conversation.
• 1:34:08
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to talk more.
• 1:34:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I would love to close the show with you.
• 1:34:14
  SPEAKER_01: I know that throughout the show you've let us know, you know, bits and pieces about about your book, but can we actually have a few moments just designated to that of you telling us about this book?
• 1:34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've talked a lot about in a little while.
• 1:34:28
  SPEAKER_00: I talked to Jenny a bit about this, and this one I just finished reading the audiobook, um, finished recording it.
• 1:34:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's available on YouTube now, and then probably within the next week or so, I'm gonna start um submitted to ACX, so it'll be available and audio audible as well.
• 1:34:47
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, if somebody wants to listen to it, you can get a hard copy.
• 1:34:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's Kindle versions available.
• 1:34:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a short book.
• 1:34:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it took me it's like uh an hour and 18 minutes when I read the whole entire thing.
• 1:34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, but it's hacked with it's sort of a cliff notes version of my whole cosmology and a lot about my journey about moving away from Christianity.
• 1:35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I wrote it and I cried towards the end.
• 1:35:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's a scene with me and my father that I think is gonna do well.
• 1:35:16
  SPEAKER_00: What I've said is that like I just need one woman in one Christian women's reading group to shed one tear and then I can retire.
• 1:35:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and and that's all we need.
• 1:35:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then I'm done, and then I'm done.
• 1:35:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's all that's the whole show.
• 1:35:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that.
• 1:35:33
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to hear it.
• 1:35:35
  SPEAKER_01: I am actually gonna be without a car tomorrow, and it was kind of done on purpose to force me to be home to take care of some things I have to take care of.
• 1:35:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna have the house to myself, and I'm gonna listen to it.
• 1:35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm really I'm really excited about it.
• 1:35:51
  SPEAKER_01: I uh yeah, I'm so excited about it.
• 1:35:54
  SPEAKER_01: I I've really enjoyed this conversation.
• 1:35:56
  SPEAKER_01: I you have how many books now?
• 1:35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Fine.
• 1:35:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have six in July.
• 1:36:01
  SPEAKER_01: Six will be in July.
• 1:36:02
  SPEAKER_01: And because you said you sent me um or or your PR person, uh whoever sent me Fs and about and so I so I've been reading them and I can't wait to check them all out.
• 1:36:13
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I'm working on doing is since we're starting to grow like a live audience on like TikTok, what I what I've been doing is trying to collect books from people, things from people, and start to do like drawings to for our regular listeners, and then whatever the prize is would be like there, you know, an autographed book by you or something like that.
• 1:36:36
  SPEAKER_01: So so if you want to send me anything like that, I'm I'm collecting some stuff.
• 1:36:40
  SPEAKER_01: I can email you the information.
• 1:36:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like I would love for you to be a part of that.
• 1:36:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be something fun that we do where like spin a wheel and and all that.
• 1:36:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like um I'm I'm I'm working on making something fun out of it for like our true like rot or die people, and I would love for you to be a part of that.
• 1:36:54
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's a great idea.
• 1:36:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, um I owe uh Jenny copies of my books, and I totally forgot about it until today.
• 1:37:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh crap, I told her to send those.
• 1:37:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I will um I'll get more copies of my books and I'll autograph them and I'll send them out to you guys.
• 1:37:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would love that.
• 1:37:10
  SPEAKER_00: I would love that.
• 1:37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it'd be cool.
• 1:37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um what else?
• 1:37:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the the this one here, this one is called the abundance experiment.
• 1:37:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote this one because when I was writing, I have this other book called Silicone and Soul, and it's about our relationship with artificial intelligence and I how I think we can use it to move humanity, helping move humanity evolve into our next era of what we should be by actually using artificial intelligence wisely.
• 1:37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Wisely being the key word, wisely being the key word, right?
• 1:37:44
  SPEAKER_00: AI, oh dude, AI is the mo it's so powerful.
• 1:37:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's just mind-blowingly powerful.
• 1:37:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I really think that I I posted to TikTok today that the I got a little passionate about it.
• 1:37:59
  SPEAKER_00: I get really passionate about writing, but the abundance experiment is as I was writing silicone and soul about our relationship with my relationship with AI started deepening.
• 1:38:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then my next book that's coming out is about radical forgiveness.
• 1:38:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's called uh you know it's called You're Forgiven.
• 1:38:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I s as I was writing it, I kept getting opportunities to practice radical forgiveness.
• 1:38:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I was writing, working on my other book uh about masculinity, about male sexuality and healthy masculinity, I kept getting new opportunities to practice healthy masculinity and better male sexuality, you know.
• 1:38:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I thought, I'm three for three, so why don't I write a book about how to manifest piles of money?
• 1:38:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that became the abundance experiment.
• 1:38:46
  SPEAKER_00: And what I learned as I was researching for this is that I was doing about it all wrong, and what I came to find out is that we tend to think that we have a relationship with money, but money is just a mirror of who we are.
• 1:39:04
  SPEAKER_00: So what this is, it's a it's a seven-week program to help people go through and adjust their relationship with money.
• 1:39:13
  SPEAKER_01: Is is this the one that I was doing about where you have the quiz?
• 1:39:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's a I mean, there's a whole workbook in here.
• 1:39:18
  SPEAKER_01: The okay, workbook.
• 1:39:19
  SPEAKER_00: I may have used the wrong word, but yeah, this there's a whole it's uh it's a seven-week, so each week there's a different lesson you go through, ask your questions, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I'm also working on I have a uh community on school.com where I'm putting together presentations talking about each one, yeah, kind of break down the whole entire thing.
• 1:39:36
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah, I I use the wrong word, but uh but but yeah, because I saw that and I was like, Oh, I want to do that.
• 1:39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, it's a great program.
• 1:39:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the the thing is what I I want to be very clear about was too is that I'm not some internet guru manifestation guru who's gonna say, Well, if you do my program, I'm gonna teach you how to manifest like money.
• 1:39:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's all this is.
• 1:40:00
  SPEAKER_00: What but what this will do, this is what I guarantee because this is what happened for me, and happens to everybody, everybody that I've talked to, is that you will understand why your relationship with money is the way that it is.
• 1:40:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing is, like we talked to earlier about shadow work.
• 1:40:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can't move forward into the new life that you want until you first understand where you are, and that that's the thing that's missing from uh manifestation teachings and all these internet gurus and all this kind of stuff.
• 1:40:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was listening to another one today who was talking about like raising your vibration and also the kind of crap, and it's like it's good, that's helpful, but if you don't understand where you are, then you can't get to the next place, and so this book will help you understand why your relationship with money is the way that it is, right?
• 1:40:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been tremendous for me because I know exactly like every money decision that I make, I'm like, oh, yep, I okay, I know exactly where I did that.
• 1:40:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, cool, and that, but then I can adjust it.
• 1:41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, from all the PDFs that that you all sent me when I saw that one and the workshops with it, I was like, Oh, I've got to this.
• 1:41:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I had even put in my notes, I forgot about it until now, and I looked over and saw it, but I put my notes how, and I'll email you about it, but how I would kind of be interested in maybe doing like little recordings of me taking the quiz, uh, the the workshops and and kind of discussing it or whatever, because I I I know personally that I talk about money a lot, and and it's not that I care about what anyone else does or doesn't have, it's just that I would care what everyone else knows what I do have.
• 1:41:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm not gonna judge you.
• 1:41:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll get in your car.
• 1:41:47
  SPEAKER_01: Your car could be a 2000 or a 1950.
• 1:41:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna care.
• 1:41:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:41:52
  SPEAKER_01: But when you get my car, it's gonna be the brand new one, you know.
• 1:41:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and and and I'm not gonna judge you for it, but I but I'm fine if you judge me as long as I'm judged because mine's new.
• 1:42:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not meaning, and I'm not meaning even newer than yours.
• 1:42:06
  SPEAKER_01: I just mean new because I deserve the new.
• 1:42:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like it would probably sound so fucked up the way that I'm saying it.
• 1:42:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying that it's a good thing, it's something that I'm trying to work on, you know.
• 1:42:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like I don't want I don't want my money to be anything that I flex on because it would be a very small flex because I don't have a lot of money.
• 1:42:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why not but why not flex?
• 1:42:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know that I'm doing it the right way.
• 1:42:34
  SPEAKER_01: What's the right way?
• 1:42:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:42:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think your workshop's gonna help me figure it out.
• 1:42:37
  SPEAKER_01: Did we just create the first reel for your workshop?
• 1:42:40
  SPEAKER_00: No, I would love to go through that with you and um yeah, go through the exercises, you know, do like a whole episode and just do like yeah, I thought that could be really cool if we did something like that.
• 1:42:51
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 1:42:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's a lot of work, it's heavy, it's no joke.
• 1:42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you know what, you know what I did?
• 1:42:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know Teal Swan?
• 1:42:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
• 1:42:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, I don't think so.
• 1:42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Write down Teal Swan, she's amazing.
• 1:43:02
  SPEAKER_00: I studied for work a lot, and she was the inspiration behind this.
• 1:43:07
  SPEAKER_00: I had there was a video series that she had done that when I was first working on this book, and there's a video series that she did, and I just I couldn't understand it.
• 1:43:18
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing that I've learned is that when I come across something that I don't fully understand, there's probably something in there that I need to unpack.
• 1:43:26
  SPEAKER_00: So what I did is I went into Teal Swan's videos and I like took copious notes and I cross-referenced and I figured and I was like, oh, and then when I finally got the picture of what it was that she was talking about, I was like, Oh, that's the whole that's the thing.
• 1:43:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then that's that's what became this.
• 1:43:44
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, and it's been it's been a game changer for me.
• 1:43:49
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of it has to do with what I talked about before, like me just like disciplining myself to put away everything else that doesn't support me as a writer.
• 1:43:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if it doesn't directly support me being a writer, I'm not doing it.
• 1:44:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because that's my mustard seed being what it is.
• 1:44:06
  SPEAKER_00: The next audiobook that I'm gonna work on is gonna be the the third path.
• 1:44:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this one is actually really cool.
• 1:44:14
  SPEAKER_00: I worked on this idea for probably close to 20 years.
• 1:44:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I took Disney's The Little Mermaid, the cartoon, and I broke down every character from an archetypal perspective, and it showed how they each represent different characteristics and traits and behaviors that we have in our own life.
• 1:44:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then the yeah, and the core argument that I make is that uh King Traden represents the patriarchy and Ursula represents the shadow, the suppressed seminal shadow.
• 1:44:47
  SPEAKER_00: What happens at the end of the movie, spoilers, is that it looks like Ariel and Eric, you know, defeat Ursula, and then King Traden is like made himself again.
• 1:45:00
  SPEAKER_00: But if you look at the symbolism there, what's really happening is that King Traitan Lee rises up out of the water, he's integrating his masculine and feminine side.
• 1:45:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's halfway up, so on below the water, it's that that's the feminine, and that's the uh not female, but like the feminine aspect that's like flowing and creative, and that's what the ocean represents.
• 1:45:23
  SPEAKER_00: But then he his top side is the masculine, it's it's human, and he's he's ruling over it.
• 1:45:30
  SPEAKER_00: But it's because he's then he's integrated his masculine and feminine in that moment, and it's when he has integrated his masculine and feminine as the ruler that he's then able to bless Ariel and as as the masculine and feminine coming together, and you like this part.
• 1:45:49
  SPEAKER_00: When he moves his trident, he casts a rainbow.
• 1:45:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
• 1:45:54
  SPEAKER_00: He casts a rainbow across everybody, right?
• 1:45:57
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 1:45:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you sold me that that's the one that I want to read first now.
• 1:46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh this is I've worked on this book for a long time.
• 1:46:04
  SPEAKER_00: It gets very, very personal, but I talk about like Sebastian and Ariel and Scuttle and like every character, and I talk about what I do, I talk about what they represent as an archetype, and then I talk about it like how that archetype played in my life personally, and then I look at it in uh throughout history and also talk about how these historical figures had those archetypes show up in their life.
• 1:46:27
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, okay, I love that.
• 1:46:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is the next audiobook that I'm gonna read for.
• 1:46:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited about this one.
• 1:46:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, same.
• 1:46:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then um, yeah, the other thing that I'm doing right now, too, is like I said, I'm trying to discipline myself to just focus on writing.
• 1:46:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I host a community on school.com called the Wordsmiths Guild.
• 1:46:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I noticed in a lot of the communities that I was part of, there's a lot of people that have writing communities, but they give like foofy, fluffy, ridiculous feedback.
• 1:47:01
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody will like present a chapter in a book that they sweat over, and then all the feedback will be like, Oh, that's so great! I'm so proud of you, blah blah blah.
• 1:47:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll probably don't you dare fucking show that to anybody.
• 1:47:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is dope shit.
• 1:47:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but but I'm also trying to work on my so my Sergeant Helgerson comes out sometimes, and it will like dress people down and be like, Daddy, you gotta do this, right?
• 1:47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:47:24
  SPEAKER_00: So what I so I started the Wordsmiths Guild, and it's focused on the actual craft of writing.
• 1:47:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if like if you want to be a good writer, then you there's training that you have to go through, there's things that you have to learn.
• 1:47:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I went to school to get my writing degree, I used my GI Bill to get my creative writing degree because I thought that it would help me become a better writer, but all it taught me was how to pick a genre and write according to that genre, right?
• 1:47:55
  SPEAKER_00: That didn't help me become a better writer.
• 1:47:58
  SPEAKER_00: So then I went to school to get my master's in fine arts in creative writing, thinking maybe that would teach me, and it just taught me more of the same kind of stuff, and I still didn't learn anything.
• 1:48:09
  SPEAKER_00: So anything that I've learned about writing has just been through the school of hard knocks, and but those are the things that I wish they would have taught me in school, and so the the lessons that I the courses that I'm building in there, the classroom stuff, the feedback that I give people is like I I don't I don't pull any punches.
• 1:48:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind, I'm working on being kind.
• 1:48:28
  SPEAKER_00: You don't always get Sergeant Elgerson, I'm more like uh Master Sergeant Reverend E.
• 1:48:34
  SPEAKER_00: B.
• 1:48:34
  SPEAKER_00: White, right writers will know who EB do you know who E.
• 1:48:37
  SPEAKER_00: B.
• 1:48:37
  SPEAKER_00: White was?
• 1:48:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, okay, yeah.
• 1:48:40
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so I'm working on being a little kinder and gentler, but but I'm just very passionate about writing, and there's so many people out there today that are just like they're trying to write and they can't figure out why they can't get published.
• 1:48:52
  SPEAKER_00: But when you look at their manuscript, it's just dog shit, and but it's because nobody ever taught them, you know.
• 1:48:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, somebody just wakes up one day and decides that they're gonna be a novelist, and then they start and they write this book, and they don't know how bad it is, they don't know how to tie things together, they don't know how to hold you know what I mean.
• 1:49:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's like character arcs and there's things that have to go into writing a good book, and um anyway, so it's my luck plug for the wordsmith skill.
• 1:49:19
  SPEAKER_00: It is, I mean, it's expensive because I don't if somebody joins the wordsmith skill, they get like my divided undivided attention.
• 1:49:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like I will help you.
• 1:49:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay, it's a thousand dollars to get into join the wordsmith skill, but I will guarantee that I will take from like your idea to you will have a published book that you are proud of, that you are very, very proud of.
• 1:49:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I and I think that's publishable.
• 1:49:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think that when people get to a place where they when they're serious about it, yeah, then you have to invest in yourself and to get to that next level.
• 1:49:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I I don't think a thousand dollars is yeah, reasonable, you know.
• 1:50:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the thing is I've I've tried working with a lot of different people and I've tried working with people with people for free, but then they just like fleak off.
• 1:50:09
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:50:10
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:50:10
  SPEAKER_01: So when you have the people that are like, if I want to invest a thousand dollars in to to you, then then they're also investing a thousand dollars into themselves, and there's respect and yeah, so there's like a like a dozen people that have have I've worked with them, I've helped them, I've I've invested my time into developing their chapters and developing their outlines and working on like craft and giving them exercises and all this other kind of stuff, and then they just like flake off.
• 1:50:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh okay, well, I'm like, I'm not doing that anymore.
• 1:50:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you want like if you want me to give you that level of attention, then I need to know that you're committed to me too.
• 1:50:46
  SPEAKER_00: That this is a journey that we'll go on together, and I think we'll go to bat for you.
• 1:50:51
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:50:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I will fight you, I'll fight the world outside, I will fight whatever to make sure that you get your book done.
• 1:50:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I know how good that feels on the other side of it.
• 1:51:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, hell yeah.
• 1:51:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's anyway.
• 1:51:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just I'm really passionate about writing.
• 1:51:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I see it, I love it.
• 1:51:07
  SPEAKER_01: And man, I've enjoyed this conversation.
• 1:51:08
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to have you back.