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Highest & Best Good · Outside Issues

• 0:01
  Speaker A: I take us to be collections of cells, each aggregate a smaller, separate life inside us. And
• 0:10
  Speaker B: time slows and finally stops
• 0:18
  Speaker A: the
• 0:19
  Speaker B: fate my cell collections live into as we speak. That ain't so To a mortal Cirque.
• 0:26
  Speaker C: D.
• 0:36
  Speaker A: Welcome to Outside Issues with Audrey and Patrick. When I can get out to a protest and then our podcast, those are, like, the two outlets I have for feeling less shitty about how the world is ending. So, yes, I don't know about you, but it's just, like. Because posting just doesn't get me there, babe.
• 0:56
  Speaker C: When's the no Kings protest over here? Saturday.
• 0:59
  Speaker A: Saturday.
• 1:00
  Speaker C: Okay. Yeah, I should have known.
• 1:02
  Speaker A: That's so cool you guys are going out to that.
• 1:04
  Speaker C: I think so. I think we are.
• 1:06
  Speaker A: Good.
• 1:07
  Speaker C: This is the first. First protest I'll be going to in quite some time. I have, like, clients that I think are going too. Hopefully I don't run into them, because that would be hella awkward. I know you. You said you've been feeling a little bit like. Like not present during the. During your trip. So, like, I mean.
• 1:26
  Speaker A: Well, it really does feel like the end of the world slash World War Three.
• 1:31
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:31
  Speaker A: You know, like, I mean, it's just. There's fighting happening everywhere, and, like, there's just no institutions with which to fight that or to, like, hold any of these people accountable. So it's just like, total gangster shit across the board. Everywhere, in every sector, there's just gangster shit, gangster shit, gangster shit. And, like, you know, I don't know. I don't have a gangster mind. Like, I don't know. And, you know, I can't marshal any force. I'm just a soft boy behind the keyboard. And. And it just feels so bleak. And, like, we've all been looking at Trump for more than 10 years now. Every day, whenever he makes a blunder or says something really stupid, you know, or shoots himself in the dick, it's like. It's immaterial because there's. If, in the absence of any real organized opposition, he just gets, like, the run of things, right? Whether he's up or down, he's always winning. And it's just, like, so demoralizing.
• 2:29
  Speaker C: It's very demoralizing. I try to look at some of the absurdism that goes on. Like, I was having a conversation with a friend about the absurdism, you know, obviously, with, like, the ice detention centers and the inflatable folks. And then I don't know if you saw the clip of him talking about Gavin Newsom and learning disabilities. No, he's like, oh, I. You Know, Gavin Newsom said that he has dyslexia. And I wouldn't want my president to have dyslexia. You know, I wouldn't want my. My president to have any cognitive disabilities. And then he goes straight into our president. Gavin Newsom has learning disabilities like that. He made that gaffe. And so I saw.
• 3:21
  Speaker A: Well, it's funny, like, barely literate, that's fine. But learning disabilities, no, we can't have that, you know, But a barely literate president. Yeah, that's cool.
• 3:29
  Speaker C: Absolutely. Let's do a little background. Matthew is my advisor and coach. Welcome. Thank you for being with us.
• 3:36
  Speaker A: What's that framed picture behind you that looks like it's probably important.
• 3:40
  Speaker B: That's a carpenter friend. Most people call him Yeshua or Jesus.
• 3:45
  Speaker A: Yeah, Yeshua.
• 3:46
  Speaker B: Yeshua. Yeah. There's a little less reflection there.
• 3:49
  Speaker A: Can I show you my Jeshua?
• 3:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, dude.
• 3:52
  Speaker A: There's my Jeshua.
• 3:54
  Speaker B: Nice. Right on, dude. I love it.
• 3:57
  Speaker A: One of my main clients is a very devout Catholic, and he trained with the Jesuits in his younger life. He wanted to try to be a Jesuit. Yeah, I love the spirituality. He practices. And he goes to Mass and, you know, he's like a very decent person. And, you know, there's been controversy, as we all know, swirling around the Catholic Church, but he doesn't think that that ought to color his practicing the principles of Jesus. And we're always working, and then he'll always point to the chief. He calls him. And then there's like a framed Yeshua over our desk. And. And every time he points to him, I always go and look at Yeshua. And I learned that, by the way, from watching the Passion of the Christ.
• 4:41
  Speaker B: This is probably going to sound terrible. I know I've seen the Passion of the Christ, but I don't remember it. That was pre TBI Matthew. I had a 50% memory loss and had to learn how to spell and read and write and everything over again at 33.
• 4:52
  Speaker A: What happened at 33? Like, just describe the incident and like, the fallout and. Yeah, like, as best. Best as you could.
• 4:59
  Speaker B: Oh, goodness. Well, you know, we were just talking about Yeshua, and from what I understand, he lived at 33, and that's when he was crucified and started over again. And I'm just now starting to put a lot of these things together of how important these numbers are in our lives. And for me, when I hit 33, I had become stale or. Or stagnant in my spirituality. I had stopped basically praying be in the mornings. I had stopped being Grateful for the things that I had in the way that I had been. I was with an amazing woman and love her, still love her. She was not a spiritual person and so I didn't want to overwhelm her with stuff. And there were a lot of things happening and things that I would do that would make her uncomfortable. And the way I like to say it is if you want to make God laugh, you just tell him your plans. I made a deal with God and my deal was that I wanted to become an expert in a field. And in order to really, truly become an expert in the field, I believe that you need to spend 10 years and 10,000 hours and you need to do everything in the field from digging the ditches all the way to building the high rise. And the field that I chose was snow sports because it's my first passion. It's something that I love and I can never have enough of it. The next thing I know, it was approaching that 10 years. I definitely had national and international recognition for coaching and instructing and boy, everything just started imploding around me. My cabin flooded. I was run into from behind by an out of control snowboarder. And then I was rescuing, rehabilitating a dog that people lied to me about. And the next thing you know, I'm in the hospital. They don't know what's the matter with me. They're giving me all these antibiotics. And at this point in time, I was, I wasn't sober guy anymore on the mainstream as far as like following bill and the 12 steps goes. I would drink once in a while. I was a heroin addict. This year will be 30 years without. I was very much involved in AA and helping other people get clean and sober for quite a long time. And the next thing you know, I ended up back out on the snow because of an emergency and. And I was running to from behind again. And I still had three slip discs in my back and whiplash. And it was a super hard icy day. I hit my head and that was the one that just about pulled my plug. Wow, 50% memory loss. And you know, being a guy, you know that I was walking around for, I don't know, almost throwing up and then throwing up. And finally someone called the ambulance and the ski patrol, they took me down and it was very clear that I had a massive traumatic brain injury and it was not my first one. So that's where my life, first life ended. And the last 17 years have been about healing. It was 11 years later that I finally discovered that my Vagus nerve had been pinched off, not fully, but I was not communicating with my heart, my body. I had paralyzed muscles. I had motor amnesia with muscles. My heart, the air valve was stopping. I was having seizures and heart attacks or seizures and strokes. Bell's palsy. My face still isn't. Still not like totally even. But considering I was drooling and biting my tongue and bleeding regularly for a while there, I feel like I'm doing very well. So at 33, I got to start my life over. And I spent pretty much 11 years doing everything that the government wanted me to do to heal myself, which was an absolute nightmare. I wanted to experience what people had to go through that didn't have what they needed. As far as a support system goes, boy howdy, I got that tenfold December of 2008, and then it was November of 2019 that I got my inner cranial adjustment and my vagus nerve started communicating again. At that point in time, I was down to 5.9. I had fused three different sections of fused vertebrae in my back. They wanted to replace my hip. And I had the metabolic age of a 78 year old. Six years later, and I have the metabolic age of a 42 year old.
• 10:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, I was gonna say, you look good, man. That's.
• 10:18
  Speaker B: Thank you.
• 10:20
  Speaker A: Not even, all things considered, you just look good.
• 10:23
  Speaker B: Thank you. I appreciate it. You know, all things considered, it's like, you know, the things that we create. Right. You know, right now, it's like, oh, it's toxic mold, you know, and other, you know, toxic environment, things of this sort. But it's still how we want to process that. And I feel like, you know, we wanted to talk about ego versus heart space, and it's so hard to get into the heart space.
• 10:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, what, what were the early days post injury? And I know there were multiple injuries, you'd said, and they had a compounding effect. But like, how, how long did it take you to find that heart space?
• 11:06
  Speaker B: It was always around me, always around me. My aunt had a clinic. One of my cousins ended up becoming a doctor. I was always very gifted with being able to understand what people's needs were in order to help themselves. And for me, it was always about the root cause. I never understood covering up with medications and things of that sort from the time I was a little kid. And I never wanted to call myself a healer because it was kind of like this taboo thing. I grew up in a Christian household. The church, as a result of. Of religion, really put me in a position where I Had a lot of beliefs that weren't my own. Directly after the accident, I still wasn't grasping the fact that helping people to better themselves and understand what their highest and best good was was going to be my life. It took a long time.
• 12:10
  Speaker C: How would you define highest and best good?
• 12:12
  Speaker B: My idea of highest and best good is something that's not only in alignment with. With the person, but it's also in alignment with everything that's going on around you. When you're on point, things just fall into place. It's. It's effortless. It's really difficult for a lot of people to grasp. Doing what's in your highest and best good, if you will, because we've boxed ourselves into these things, relieve us of
• 12:44
  Speaker A: the bondage of self. Right? I mean, and the act of healing is you help another. Right. And in doing so, you help yourself.
• 12:52
  Speaker C: My highest and best good is always doing what's right for me so I can do what's good for the world. Because I consider myself a healer as well, being a clinical social worker, social worker in general. So that's how I defined highest and best. So it's always projecting out into a other people, which I love. And that's why we also have, you know, we discuss politics, because it's. I fell in love with politics because I saw a person struggling with, you know, not having water back in 2011 at a job that I had. And so that's when I sort of committed myself to being of service and making sure that I have the tools to keep myself in check in order to help others. And so that's why I'm in this helping profession.
• 13:47
  Speaker A: I love that you started with yourself, you know, and like, centering yourself. And like you. You're of no good to others unless you first, you know, batten down the hatches or. And I know that you had to work hard to get that because you didn't always put yourself first. Right. And I think we have that in common. Is that, like, we had to. We didn't have much confidence at a certain point in our lives.
• 14:08
  Speaker C: Right?
• 14:08
  Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, boy. Audrey, you've just been. You're a gem. I mean, you're a diamond that's. That's starting to just shine so bright for everyone. And it's amazing to watch and really wonderful to see. It takes time to be in a position where we're able to really, truly help people. When we get to a point that the people around us and everyone that's around us are as important as what we're Doing for ourselves. The whole society is just going to shift. As much as we use the words and we say the things, there's something inside of us that's keeping us from truly being able to set ourselves aside and, and be a part of the whole. Or if you're a. If you're a Trekkie, the collective, you know, it's like the Borg. Be assimilated, if you will.
• 15:07
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, my pop culture touchstone, I love that yours is Star Trek. And I've gained, you know, more and more appreciation for that world over the years, you know, because of its, like, egalitarian, you know, society and, you know, the how woke it is. I love the wokeness of Star Trek, but I'm a big Superman. Superman guy. I love Superman. And, you know, speaking of Yeshua, you know, like, Superman's a pretty strong Jesus analogy. They've leaned on it hard in the movies and stuff, but, like, you know, just that, like humility and his entire imperative is about saving people and, you know, under great duress and cost, you know, to himself sometimes, but basically just taking his power and always channeling it, never channeling it into, you know, being a thug, but always using it to kind of like heal and help and rescue and, you know. Yeah. So high, highest and best is keep the herd together. I think that's my simplest explanation for me.
• 16:11
  Speaker B: All right. Yeah, you mentioned Superman. He's one of my favorites for the main reason that his character, Clark Kent, the role that he plays in society is that of someone struggling to be normal and almost unnoticed and understand the way that everyone else is operating. When inside he is this being that has the ability to do so much more than everyone else. And I see that in everyone. It's something that I feel. Everyone has that spark of Superman inside of them and they just need to embrace it.
• 16:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's very well said. And I don't want to get into a Superman tangent. I could go all day.
• 16:55
  Speaker B: Before my injuries, I didn't understand unconditional love. And now we brought Trekkies in. We can bring a little Star wars in there too. When you're watching Star Wars, Luke is like, like, why can't I have both? Right? You know, why can't I have the dark side and the good in you? And before my accidents, I really believe that you could embrace both. I had. I had a pretty good childhood, but there was a lot of traumas in there. I was different than most people. Back in the 80s when I was diagnosed, ADSD, ASD, nobody knew what the hell that was, they put me in a special room with a bunch of kids that some of them were non speakers, some of them were incredibly disabled. And it kind of like pegged me as someone who was different. As well as being betrayed by the church. At one point in time, I had embraced both that darkness inside of me, that anger, that fear, you know, the weakness, as well as really wanting to bring in the golden light, love of God. But it, it, they did, they don't play together. Oil and water. And so I did a really good job of helping people the way that I could. And it was a very different thing. Before my accidents, I was the guy that would dive straight into the most crazy situation. I always felt hope was a funny word. After my accidents, I ended up in a position where I consciously had to give up all hope and completely release everything that I thought I knew and accept that I was going to be disabled the rest of my life. I may never be able to eat without pain or shave without being in massive pain. I may never be able to walk. I've had the numerous doctors that were just borderline cruel and then they would look at my X rays and they would literally cancel their next appointment afterwards because they wanted, would want to know how the hell was I walking right now. Like, legitimately, medically, there is no explanation why I should be able to stand and communicate. So I gave up all hope. It took giving up all hope in order to really be in a position where I could understand that it's hugely important to be able to have something that we can hold onto, that's inside of us. And I think it's different for everyone. But that thing that isn't in the present is something that really, in humanity, it's really something that drives us. The goal, the end result, what is this going to look like when I'm done? And it keeps us from being present. But I think that hope is this incredibly important thing that we really need in our lives and in the current state of the world.
• 19:58
  Speaker A: It's awful.
• 19:59
  Speaker B: And for me, when I gave up all hope, that's when God and the angels and my ancestors, you know, big cheeseburger in the sky, whatever you want to call it, started really sending the right people to me. There was a qigong master that I had been trying to get in touch with for close to 20 years. I gave up hope. And I got on my knees and I prayed and I told God that if this is truly what he wants for me in the rest of my life, then that's fine. I will do everything that I can. I beg to go home to Jesus more times than I can count. And it's been a quite a role. I'm getting a little teared up thinking about was. It was quite a process and I've done a lot of work on being neutral to this whole period of time, but it still is gut wrenching to even talk about it sometimes. Really giving up all hope, setting myself aside and allowing a higher power to guide me was what ultimately put me in a position where I'm now on my path. You know, I think it was probably the next day after that that a buddy of mine called who amazing, amazing man. Taught massage at Seattle Massage School and all these other places for many years. He called me up and he was like, dude, I was talking to this guy and I told him that you guys really do mean to me, need to meet. And this is someone that was just outside of my circle, sphere of influence with doctors and things. I. I've been so blessed to be invited to places where world renowned doctors are that are just, you know, breaking through all of this stuff throughout most of my life. And this guy came out within the week. He changed his schedule, drove two hours to me, did a treatment. And I really believe that that was a result of me accepting where I was in that moment. And my idea of hope changing from a headspace to a heart space.
• 22:12
  Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. I mean, I almost think of it like, not necessarily giving up hope, but giving up expectations, you know, and giving up the mentality that I'm only, I'm only, I'm okay only if. As opposed to I'm okay. Even if when people say it's all God or, you know, it's like, yeah, God means sometimes you're going to be in like agony, you know, all day, every day you've got to accept again. And every day there's resistance to the accepting because there's all kinds of shit that happens that you would like to not be a reality. But it is.
• 22:42
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's right there in the first step. And oh, man, I actually, I need to reach out to someone. I'm getting a little teared up here. Yeah. I had one guy that he just would get so angry with me because I wouldn't let him pass the first step. He couldn't get out of his own way. Just couldn't get out of his own way. It was like a year and he did something and I was like, yeah, dude, yeah. I was like, you just killed it. I was like, dude, you don't even know what just happened, did you? And he was like, what? It's like you just gave up. You just. You just let go and accept it and move forward. And he got it and did really well for quite a while after that. I don't know what's happening now, but yeah, acceptance.
• 23:28
  Speaker C: Acceptance is something that you have mentioned a lot when it comes to divine wisdom, which you teach me quite a bit, and that has helped me in my life in numerous ways. So, again, just what's your definition of defi.
• 23:43
  Speaker B: Divine wisdom, that thing that's outside of ourselves that is coming into us, that is our truest self. And there's now science that's starting to back all of this stuff up. Divine wisdom for me, I'm sure it can be very different than someone else. Divine wisdom for me is knowing that this is something that doesn't have any darkness in it. It's something that works for everyone.
• 24:15
  Speaker A: My inelegant way of describing divine wisdom is the second voice. So the first voice, when I get pissed off at someone and I just want to react and some ugly, immature display, that's not the voice. That's not the wisdom voice. That's not the divine voice. It's the one that comes after that's had a little time to cool, that has maybe a little more omniscience to it, you know, and it's. And then, you know, there's phases of my life where I'm only being driven by the first voice. But then through, you know, things like therapy and, you know, working the steps and all kinds of maturation rituals, you know, I live more in the second voice. Your. I, like your definition, is a lot nicer than mine.
• 25:02
  Speaker B: No, and it. And it is. And it's something that. It's that it's that thing that's inside of us that's greater than ourselves. The second voice is a beautiful way to put it. Our conscious mind and our egos are typically the first things that are responding. And we need to take a breath and be able to just kind of like take that little elevator down, down into our heart and say, oh, hey, what does my second voice say? You know, there's more neuropeptides around the heart than there is around the brain. There's something that's really been lost in societies as a result of fear of what we don't understand. One of the things that I've been really digging into lately is hermaphroditism and intersex. And there are tons and tons of people that have that it's that ninth chromosome that in some ways is flip flopped. Right. If we're saying that gay people are not of God, then why did he create so many people in society with this chromosome that would have a same sex attraction? Why was that in ancient Indian cultures? Why were those couples the ones that were revered because they were setting themselves aside from family and being in a position where they were able to really help other people? There's basically around every cell there's these little receptors, these light receptors. And we discovered that if you remove those from the cell and you put them on a different cell, the body. So let's. You got person A who needs a liver transplant. This is the goal in science. Person A needs a liver transplant. Well, our body rejects things that aren't of us. And so someone who has a liver transplant is going to have to take something their whole life so their body doesn't reject it. Well, what they discovered is even though those cells may be very different, if you remove the outside where, where this light seems to come into the cell from somewhere else, and you put it around that cell, now the body accepts that cell. And so I feel like that those hairs that are around each cell that are receiving that light, those codes, if you will, are receiving that divine wisdom. And so that's our self, if you will.
• 27:33
  Speaker A: What you're really getting at is there our differences are only skin deep, or that there really is no difference and there's no separation from me and you. I think a lot about. Yeah, about dignity for trans people and stuff. And, you know, part of what hurts me about how they've been discriminated against and all the bad things that have, you know, been visited upon them the last couple years is just how not different they are. We're all just cells, man.
• 27:57
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we're. We're just light coming in and cells. And everyone has their own beliefs that were given to them and it doesn't need to be our truths.
• 28:08
  Speaker A: What are you and Audrey working on, like, in terms of like the recovery project or like, I mean, I just. Because Audrey is coming back from a lot of stuff, I'm coming back from a lot of stuff, and it's clearly working wonders for her. And what is like, without getting too personal, obviously, you know, what are some, like, some recovery practices or interests that, you know, you can tantalize our viewers with?
• 28:34
  Speaker C: Let's see, a lot of my entire life, I guess. Okay. Yeah, my entire life and my entire societal programming and, and, and environmental programming and my family programming D deprogramming that and filling myself with goodness, I'd say, like, like we talk about on the show, I struggle a lot with mental illness. And so, you know, working, working with Matthew has really helped me with different aspects of that. And, you know, it. I think a lot of it has to. Lately we've been dissecting my abuse that I experienced. And so as hard as that is, I have to see the light in it because there is a lot of light that came out of that situation. However, it affects me deeply. So that's kind of what we're touching on. I'm, I'm finally ready in this point of my recovery, what, like three or four years later, for me to like, finally dig into that, that, that space.
• 29:43
  Speaker B: I did it a little bit backwards. So by the time I was 23, I was corporate scum. I was successful, had cell phone stores, had created the number one home improvements, helped create the number one home improvements company in the U.S. and then that fell into mainstream style coaching. Up until my accidents, my coaching aspect was the basically override and push through style of coaching. And when it comes to snow sports, it was very much embracing what's happening right now. Like, let's, let's say that a kid's trying to do a 180, but he's got a movement that he does. That's the wrong movement. I was that crazy guy in the US that would be like, all right, let's expand on that movement. Let's really make it really, really wrong. Let's really overdo it and see what happens. And then they were able to feel that over accentuation and then pull it back in and then get them balanced to do what they needed to do. With a lot of people, that mainstream Tony Robbins style hoorah stuff, it'll work, but there's a lot of people where that isn't going to work. You're going to go to sleep, you're going to reset, and the next thing you know, it's over. In the last five years, I've really focused on the mind and through my whole life I've wanted to find the things that we're getting to the root cause and changing what's at the root. So and so for a lot of people, it starts out with being able to change their beliefs and then it goes into more of the coaching, the business aspect of things, of, hey, this is what we need to change. We need to change our physiology more. The more we change our physical being, the wiring in our brain, all of the tuning, the easier things come in. Yeah, Audrey, I I just got to say, in the last, like, you've made a huge, huge shift in the last several months. This is now a woman that you need to look out for here. She's aware of what she's doing. She's checking in with herself. She knows what's in her highest and best good. I am now moving more towards professional athletes and business executives and things of that sort after working with some amazing psychologists and counselors and helping them and co counseling with people.
• 32:04
  Speaker C: Also, we talked, we dedicated an entire episode to, you know, my loved one, Adam, who overdosed in 2016. And that's been coming up recently. And so Matthew is helping me look at the bright side of that. Even though, you know, he's gone, there's his light still, still lingers.