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Psychedelics and Buddhism: Why Peak Experiences Aren't Enough (with Martijn Schirp) · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today's conversation is with someone I've known for about a decade, Martine Chirp.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's the person who first reached out to me after I posted a meditation article on Reddit.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that message eventually led us to co-founding High Existence together and running transformational retreats in Costa Rica.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Since then, Martine has been through a lot.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Before I met him, he was a professional poker player who finished 102nd in the World Series of poker.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: He hit a crisis of meaning in Vegas that led him to a Buddhist monastery.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Then he eventually started working on High Existence with Jordan Lejwan, and then he met me.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: After High Existence, he co-founded Synthesis, one of the first legal psilocybin retreat centers in the world, and watched it become what people called the gold standard of psychedelic retreats.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then in a series of unfortunate events, he watched it all collapse.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: In 2023, Synthesis went bankrupt.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Martin got physically ill from the stress and spent a few years recovering.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And now he's back with something new: a 12-month program called Upayosis, a path between worlds, that weaves Buddhist contemplative training with intentional psychedelic practice.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually joining this program myself, not as a promotional thing.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I genuinely want to deepen my practice.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I've seen how thoroughly Martin creates things.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: This conversation is a reunion between old friends, but it's also an honest exploration of what went wrong, what he learned, and why he believes the synthesis of Buddhism and psychedelics might be exactly what this moment requires.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Martin, uh thank you so much for coming to speak with me today.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: We've known each other for I want to say if it's 2026 now, about a decade, if not a bit longer.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when you first reached out to me after I wrote a meditation article many years ago.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I posted it on Reddit and you sent me a message that changed my life.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what you sent me or anything about that initial interaction we had?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: I remember browsing Reddit at the time about medication.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: I read your article and I was like, wow, this guy has a really real knack for writing, and also a curiosity about a topic I'm I'm I'm very passionate about.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so high existence.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I normally don't do that.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: So um, but I I felt like I don't know, there was something there.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh I I like just like to chat with this guy, and maybe um there's you know I think I think I remember also s looking at your website and noticing you were um entrepreneurial minded and starting to do something by yourself.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something I really uh appreciate and respect.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um for for you know a lot of host of reasons.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: I would say over there.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so those things combined made me made me curious, like who is who is this person?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think I dropped you a message and you got back to me quite quickly.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how it that's how it all began.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: The person that I was working with on high existence.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say has changed?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: The obvious answer is ten years.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh the non-cheeky answer.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think I've gone through a lot and I've had to learn quite a few hard lessons, and as you know, uh you know, I can I can be sometimes I can be quite stubborn, and and I I take a lot of effort to get to the views that I have, and so it it often takes a lot of um counter evidence or feedback or sometimes even critique to kind of change that.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but once it is, I think they're well formed.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I think through my time together with you and and with our colleagues at at high existence and apotheosis, and then through my time at synthesis, I I learned a lot about my strengths and also my my shortcomings.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: And and that was deeply humbling in um you know on on the heart and on the being.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And and then with the bankruptcy of synthesis, that was kind of a big wake-up to where um like spending seven years of my life building something that I truly believe in and putting so much effort, you know, to the the point of sometimes even burnout and and and deep self-sacrifice to to build something almost from my um ideological perspective or ide idealism perspective, not ideological.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um I had to kind of process that in a way after it going after company going bankrupt to see like where did I go.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and that process took took over two, three years.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like I haven't really been back doing anything.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: I I've had a lot of ideas and I've I've worked, you know, I've studied a lot and I I really went back to my practice in a way that I haven't before.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think all these experiences together really matured me in a way that I'm I'm very grateful for, but it wasn't always easy.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that you know, life experience plus you know, really amazing support from my mentors and teachers, plus some really hard lessons, um, plus you know, doing what I always have done is is really trying to learn.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and and I was I was talking to a um to a friend the other day, and I I I was explaining judge myself for making mistakes, but I do have an intention.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to repeat mistakes.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, repetition is not necessarily uh I do it twice and then I'm I can't judge myself, but more like if I keep doing something over time and I'm realizing this is not the right way, I I'm trying on average I try to figure out how can I avoid doing that in the talk.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't mean it doesn't mean always that I can fix it myself.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I just need to stop doing something like this is that's not something I'm good at.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I shouldn't put myself in this position and having the discipline to do it out.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not perfect, but it's it's been it's been working out well relatively for me um on this journey.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I what I've noticed is I tend to really, really, really care about certain things.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: And when I do, it's the they're the things I want to go all in.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like I don't I stop caring quickly about frivolous things, but the things that I really care about, which is my relationships, my friendships, my personal practice, and my projects.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like that is something that that um will get my full attention and my full dedication.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's something, you know, I I am often inspired and and and positively touched by you know notions of mastery, of competence per se, or to inflate a sense of self, but just the art of it.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And when I really care about something, I like I I really love to be really deeply absorbed and understand every little detail.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and that works great for things that I am interested in, and then sometimes you know the things that I'm not interested in, but all also are important, they kind of sometimes lose my attention, and that that's kind of the jelly side of it.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And um and that but it I I feel like I've been incredibly grateful, uh and fortunate to be able to do this for a living, like through high existence, through a poteosis, through synthesis, and and beyond.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's something that I'm I'm I don't take for granted because it is it's it's not an easy path at the same time um be able to spend as much time in my in my in my you know my my um my interests and my you know uh my obsessions uh and that's that is something I'm I'm um yeah, I'm I'm yeah, it's something that is really um rare, I think.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so I think entrepreneurship in general has taught me, okay, you can actually create something that can sustain you as opposed to oh, I need to conform to what uh what the world can offer me in types in in world of jobs or or organizations.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's something we share, and that's something, you know, coming back to your previous comment, that is a path that um you know doesn't work for a lot of people, but it works for some.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's high existence.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: And to have that in how we generate ideas and how we take feedback.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's a personal practice, I think.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost a spiritual practice and uh version of the journey so far.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that's I think that that's something I really deeply value.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: And probably because I'm biased, because I'm oriented as all of these different things.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: But it's it it helps to have kind of the same language and the same kind of orientation if you want to build something together.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um well if if you would add the story starts earlier than that.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like I grew up in a uh very simple household, uh working class family, and I was the first person in my family that went to university, and so all my friends, they had um they were slightly better off.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so I always was a little bit envious of the gifts they got, and and that you know, I knew my parents couldn't afford the same things, and so I felt like I had to work from for it from a very young age.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had these um, you know, I was already dumpster diving to make money when I was like 10 years old and and stuff like that.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have stories about you know collecting, you know, figuring out certain things that could be profitable from a very young age.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then when the internet came around, I started selling, I ran into poker and it's like, oh, wait a minute, this is this is great.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that I love to do.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: I love to play games and and figure things out, and and there was money involved.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I started doing free rolls, made a bit of money, and then I I ran it up and um you know, played some of the biggest tournaments in the world and some of the highest stakes.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and that was really amazing um to experience something like that, that I could figure something out and I could reward it by it.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think that gave a lot of confidence, and it it helped me kind of quote unquote escape um the world I grew up in because that was like my my upbringing wasn't always so easy, and there were parts in my family dynamics that I really struggled with, and I didn't have the capacity at that time to address it.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so my my into beat financially independent.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and I was studying physics at the time, and so I was kind of a hard materialist, and that combined with the poker lifestyle, kind of what happened was this this nihilism, this cynicism kind of seeped in.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like this um in the world is just inert kind of dead matter, and we are beings living kind of in a in an uncaring void universe, and the the only way to be happy is to follow your own kind of um um, you know, your hedonistic search for pleasure.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that was kind of the the the the the the postmodern neoliberal worldview, capitalist, materialistic worldview I grew up in.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I see that.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I kind of went all in on that, and I uh you know, I became financially more successful than I ever thought.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, I was like I was still a kid coming from a very small town in the Netherlands, and I I thought, you know, this is this is great until at one point it wasn't great anymore, and I realized I I wasn't able to escape some of the suffering I was holding.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: And um you couldn't stack up pleasure upon pleasure upon pleasure because it it would never be enough and it would always be kind of a price to pay.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and two things really helped me kind of to see that.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: One was I I stopped studying physics and I started studying philosophy.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: I had a poker roommate at the time who um kept beating me in the bait.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: He affected his his depth and his his care and his wisdom, and he studied philosophy, and that was very inspiring.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so a few of us actually from the from the poker house that we lived in all started studying philosophy.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was a really amazing practice and skill to develop.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the second thing that really helped me was um studying Buddhism.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And right after poker, I realized wait a minute, I think I'm I'm still winning, you know, more money than my dad makes in in years in one tournament.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not getting any gratification.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually doing worse and worse.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was something, this internal sense, something is deeply wrong with me.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: I need to find out what that is.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And to a mentor, I was introduced to Buddhism, happening, like, oh, a big part of my suffering is because I am trying to avoid feeling a huge range of emotions and basically drowning that by distracting myself in gambling, in sex, in drugs.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: And none of that worked long term.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: None of that was a valid strategy.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so the Buddhist view towards that is actually all the those forms of grasping actually lead to uh a diminished, smaller world and uh less less capacity to to handle life's difficulties, it's and it it basically doesn't um help you develop spiritually, and it actually leads to a lot of suffering.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I found that to be incredibly true for me.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Here I was trying to escape my hanging, and financially, or from the outside, I was doing you know, I was doing really well, quote unquote.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: On the inside, I I kind of was a mess, and and so it it it completely fit the Buddhist diagnostic.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was a huge um wake-up call for me.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I found ayahuasca around the same time, and I realized uh through working with that sacrament that there was a range of intergenerational trauma.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: My my grandfather grew up in a uh in a German orphanage and very, very tough upbringing, and I know very little about it because it was completely taboo in my family to even talk about you know what happened there.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And but you don't have to go far into documentaries about orphanages and and other things about and and that you know that transmitted to my dad and that transmitted to me, and for me that was just normal.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Only later I realized during my ayahuasca experience, like I was carrying trauma from the Second World War that um was completely normalized in my family, but led to all these forms of dysfunctional uh relating to other people.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was the way I expressed care was trying to be, you know, trying to um force people to s to to act better on their behalf by getting angry at them.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that didn't land, you know, that didn't land so well at times and wasn't very skillful.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the care was there.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, when I received care from my dad, often it was through frustration and anger, which didn't work for me at all.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like I got angry back, we got into a fight, and we stopped talking, and that happened again and again until we kind of stopped relating altogether.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: And after ayahuasca, I realized wait a minute, what he is doing is what I am doing, which is what my grandfather has been doing.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And actually it's very well deeply rooted in love and care, which is kind of similar to how Buddhists kind of view our essential nature, that everything springs up from forth out of care, out of wanting to do well, but there are different ways of perceiving what that exactly entails.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so it comes out in very sometimes very harmful ways.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and seeing that was like a huge, huge, huge eye-opening, eye-opener to me.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, okay, I want to study this like full-time.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is such um such an awakening for me, such a um, and such a calling.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like this, I think, is the one of the most important things that I could have experienced.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I'm I'm very surprised that this is not common knowledge.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is not something that is very well known.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was kind of the reason why I wanted to start something like High Existence to to talk about this and find other people who felt similar.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then I found this website that was already started by Jordan, Jordan Lebuan.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I sent him kind of a similar message that I sent to you like, hey, I love your website, I have some ideas, would you we could be open to chatting and working together?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and so that was the beginning of that.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I started writing about some of my experiences and some of my insights, and it, you know, what ended up is like a lot of people are interested in this, not just me.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, in the in the small town that I grew up in, very few people, but globally, through the internet, you know, we could create a subculture or like a small community of all these individuals who were in small towns who didn't have anyone else to connect with.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that was that was amazing.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like growing up as the part of the internet generation, to to be able to do that was so thrilling, was so exciting.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think that was kind of the the seed, deepening of the seed of entrepreneurship, like the confidence from poker, and then the the spiritual work with Buddhism and psychedelics, and then the capacity to actually create something that was meaningful for other people through high existence, that became like kind of a a formula, if you will, that I felt here we can do something that is um healing and liberating for people.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And and so, yeah, that that's kind of the the maybe a bit longer story than your question entailed, but I uh I feel like some of the context is important to shape uh the conversation.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I really appreciate that you went there.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um what you described as the Buddhist view of sort of like things springing from care.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know if it's related, but it reminded me of the idea that Socrates um had sometimes it's called a Socratic paradox, where he said that no one does wrong willingly.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's more people don't really know what's good and what's not good.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: If they know what's good, they would do it.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: So wrongdoing comes from not truly knowing.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you just misjudge what's good or beneficial or just right.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's very in a way, very mirroring, I don't know, the extent to this idea specifically, but in Buddhist view, there's a fundamental drive for suffering is ignorance, not knowing.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and if you truly knew from a wisdom place, you would you it's kind of like putting your hand in a fire.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like nobody would do that willingly, because it it's painful, it hurts.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if people don't realize it's painful and hurt and it hurts because they're self, you know, self-absorbed, or you know, they've had dysfunctional, you know, families in which they grew up in, then you don't you know not having great models, then you don't know.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore you you tend to repeat what you already know, and that's can be very painful and um unfortunately also avoidable.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, also avoidable.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: I remember back when we were working closely together on high existence, uh, we you know, we were talking a lot about consciousness.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: You you were a big, big mentor for me.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: You introduced me to so many ideas, um and themes and topics, which I um I know we had some kind of debates ourselves, right?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you I guess you in the same way that you were debating someone who you were playing poker with and they kind of introduced you to philosophy.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think you played that role for me too.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um but we were asking big questions about life and our future.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Back then, as you look back, do you think you were circling around something that now you you finally arrived at?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: What a sweet question.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um Yes and no.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, is that I back then I was very much a seeker.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it implies I haven't I didn't find find it yet.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm at a place right now where I feel like I don't have to seek anymore.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: And those questions, a lot of those questions don't hold that much relevance anymore.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: They they stopped being questions because they were looking for something, and I don't think I'm looking for that anymore.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think I found it.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's more a question of deepening that.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and that that's a radical shift.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that happened mainly over the last three years.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, towards the end of synthesis, I knew I knew it would be it would it would be very difficult to keep the company alive.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I started reconnecting with some of my teachers, and and things just landed differently in a way that um before they were still kind of conceptual and theoretical, and now they became kind of a living living radiant, a living truth.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: And um and so yes and no.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right, okay.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you're you're not seeking in the same way that you you you were back back before.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um Yeah, I think I feel like I had a lot of questions and looking, like trying to find the right answers, and now those questions don't they just don't come up anymore.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things we did talk about uh is back in the high existence days was that you wanted to create your own um plant medicine psychedelic retreat.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: You had big visions for this.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then you ended up founding co-founding Synthesis.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: For people who don't know, uh correct me if I'm wrong, but you built one of the first legal psilocybin retreat centers in the world.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um you partnered with Imperial College London.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: 700 people came through in the first year, and many referred to synthesis as the gold standard of psychedelic retreats.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what was that like for you being at the frontier of something that didn't really have a playbook?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't something like you could just go and you know you know uh do business by numbers and just you knew exactly what to do.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: You were on the frontier of something quite unique at this time.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think we had 700 in the first year, but we we ended up over the years we had slightly over a thousand, eleven hundred or something posted out um over a period of six, seven years.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Just wanted to correct you on that.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: But um it was intense.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was really amazing.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like we we did a lot of that work before I started synthesis.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like through our work with apotiosis, I got to think through a lot of these first principles, and and then it became clear that um there was a real need and hunger to have a model that was more accessible for folks who weren't as deeply steeped into psychedelic culture, into contemplative practice, um, but would still kind of really provide a safe space that was professionally held and that was, you know, um scientifically following best principles around harm reduction and trying to support positive outcome, positive well-being.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, that was an idea that started at one point, and we built a kind of a simple model and a kind of like a minimal, viable product, if you will.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and it just got momentum from day one.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was really like a rocket ship, and and it was really beautiful and amazing.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think we had such a sweet, beautiful team.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: So incre like looking back, incredibly talented, incredibly caring, and there was the um the kind of unquestioned, unexperienced aspects of trying to grow a company.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: We were um CP, um, so we were uh PC backed, so venture capital backed.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: We had some really amazing investors that really cared about it and and you know were on average very, very willing to consider like to hold that these medicines are sacred and to make sure that um that didn't um wasn't undermined by kind of the the capitalist tendencies within our society, and at the same time, that was very, very difficult.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so there were tons and tons and tons of ethical um problems we faced that we had to solve.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think on average, I think we did a good job, and retreat business models are just incredibly difficult.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: And with COVID and with the growth of the team, um some of the things became, you know, some of the small things that we didn't um tend to with the care that they needed became really big things over time.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's one of the more painful things to to think back, that we in the end we weren't really able to to cross the divide to to really work together and solve these solve some of these things.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so in the end, we we made a few big um we made a few big mistakes.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um it seemed some of them seemed like good decisions in the moment, but they you know they ended up becoming too expensive and uh and and we ran out of money and and that was that was very painful on on multiple fronts.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the thing that I really loved about synthesis was um this this sense of what we're doing is really beautiful and um and we we really cared about people's experience, and I think that showed.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think people felt that and um and that allowed us to do research to um you know to hire some of the best people in the space and and build really amazing um experiences.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: You uh you started off as the CEO, and then I believe did you step into the chief visionary officer?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Was that the next role for you?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I co-founded the company and my co-founder Paul Austin, he stepped down about a year in, and um we were joined by a few more senior people, and then when COVID happened, I I was pretty dysregulated.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: I we lost our revenue overnight, and that was very hard because we we finally solved a few problems, and so now we we were doing like four retreats a month, and we had a very small dedicated team.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, there were a lot of things that we still need to figure out, but we were pretty solid and finally getting stabilized in a way that gave us some breathing room, and then you know, this um, you know, we didn't know if viruses are alive or not, but this virus from you know from a bat in Wuhan uh changed changed uh you know everything overnight, and we lost all our revenue.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I tried to think like what how can we survive this?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I I don't think I was at my best.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so there were some suggestions for me to maybe step down as the CEO and let someone more experienced take over.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so two and a half years in, I think those are two have two and a half years, um, I passed the um the role to someone else, and I basically became someone in the company um more focused on idea generation, innovation, um, some mediation between different um groups within the company that had different views on how to do things.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I kept a significant role within sales and marketing, in product development and research, and um also um health screening.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: That was uh part that I um that was such a critical aspect of the company, um not just for legal reasons, but also you know, we wanted people to stay safe, but it was also a very costly process, and we didn't know so much, so we had it was like we had to develop technology to to do that on scale, and it was also a business aspect because um if we reject, you know, if we reject too many people that could benefit, that was very expensive, and we we we would say to people like, hey, maybe this is not benefiting you.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it could have benefited them, which is a form of harm, or vice versa, we were accepting people uh into the program, um, and that would be very difficult for the person joining it, and they were not ready for the team, and you know, um that was also very expensive.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was a very delicate um thing to tune right, if you will.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: So those were the things I was kind of involved in, and in the bigger decision-making strategy, um I was on the board and I gave my suggestions, and um, but it was not necessarily my decision anymore.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that worked well for about two years, two and a half years until until it didn't.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um and that that was incredibly difficult as well to I'd like to talk about um the collapse, but before we get into that, um when you were the chief visionary officer, what was your grand vision for the company?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like with the most ambitious vision you had.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've heard psychedelic hogwarts was one of the phrases I've read somewhere.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I my sincere belief, and I still hold this, and this is something I when I step down, when census fell, this is still one of the more driving visions that I have.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I like this is something that I I sometimes get a vi I'm I'm grasped, I'm almost possessed by a vision, and it feels like it wants to use me as an instrument to come to come to fruition.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a very semi-mystical kind of experience for me.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: And one that continues to um hold power over me, if you will, is the belief that the container is the medicine, meaning the psychedelic is is a sacrament, but it gives you access to different modes of being, to different worlds, to different ontologies.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: Ontologies meaning they can open up different worlds in a sense like it it allows things to exist that maybe weren't real before.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: And to develop that, you know, the classic kind of approach is sub-setting and um ritual, those things together.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: But if you really think about the things that constitute our psyche, our interiority, you know, you need to think about um, you know, beyond the kind of classical dualisms between nature and culture or human and and and technology or organisms and technology inside-outside, you need to think about all these things that together create a container.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the most daring visions was to build a um a huge retreat center with a lot of nature, with animals, with wellness, with um um with a lot of practices, like spiritual teachers, where people could go and have these tremendous experiences, but once they take it after a psychedelic, once these higher order beliefs have dissolved, you have to be incredibly careful what you let in after, because people are incredibly suggestible, they're raw, they're sensitive, and they they're looking for kind of a new way, new model, if you will, to navigate the world.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, this kind of what we see in like one explanation, what we see from the studies is people, for example, in a depression study, they go to a very caring team, they get psilocybin, they start to feel better, they get therapy, and when when they're in that container, they're doing better and better and better.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: But then one point the study ends, they go back to their previous situation, and often there's a lot of things that made them sick to begin with in that situation, and so they start getting worse again.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, this is not true for everyone, but on average, I think it's a pretty fair explanation.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so we were thinking, you know, what would a center like that look like?
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: What would be the proper context that um we would need to build a more healthy relationship with our emotions, with each other, etc.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so contemplative-based, nature-based um experience that had a big sense of of um wellness and recovery to it.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, I love that.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's uh that's an epic vision.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um okay, yeah, I joined.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was really cool to work on that.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: I still have some of the uh the vision boards from that and uh um you know some wild ideas, but it it it it was really um amazing to dream like that.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like what would be like what are the core things that make people sick in society to begin with, and can we create a context in which those conditions are not there?
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, it w within that context, it was a really um amazing opportunity to to to dream like that.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like that, yeah.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, there was definitely a fair share of uh misfortune or at least at the time, bad luck, um, with COVID and and some other things.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I I always remember Synthesis be uh from the outside being this incredible um visionary company, like as I said, the gold standard of psychedelic retreats.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then I was just really surprised to hear that it it just didn't it it wasn't going anymore all of a sudden.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: It just seemed like a very big shock to my system at least.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um what what happened?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: What happened there?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um I think a lot of things.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think the we have I have to be careful and I think the space and and and in general we have to be careful to to want to point to single causes and and then to scapegoat a person or or a belief.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think it's like really reflecting a lot of things.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think it's very easy to tempt the temptation is really there to point to a single person or a single decision or to a single kind of belief that was operating within the culture and the organization.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think those all had uh impact and um you know they're not without blame.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and at the same time, you know, there was COVID.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: We had to innovate to keep the company alive.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: That meant we had to build a new business plan.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: That business plan had a different business model and a different audience, and that was not necessarily congruent with the rest of the company.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so we created we had a team in the Netherlands, and we we had at one point we had a team in the US.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: The time zone differences were difficult, but also the the the cultural differences were palpable, and then we had multiple rounds of funding where the first group of founders were they invested in the retreat model, then the second group of founders they invested in the training model.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't always see eye to eye.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happened, we we developed more and more um schisms between different groups, between different beliefs.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and um in the end, I think we developed um you have the concept of technical debt where if you don't fix code on time, over time the code kind of starts to um compound and it becomes more and more expensive.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's like your credit card, you you don't pay off, and the rent keeps incre the interest keeps compounding, it's harder and harder to pay off.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think we had that and on a cultural level and also perhaps also on a technical level.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: And and so the way we tried to solve problems, I think we we got fixed into a process of well, we need more people because trying to hold all these pieces is just too hard with a team as is.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we kept hiring more and more, and and that but that created this pressure on um on the marketing and sales team.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, well, that means we need to offer more products and get more people through.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: That means we need more people to hold that with the ethical standards.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we I think we just wanted to do too many things with too high of a standard, and and and and not a single group within the organization let other groups get away with less than um not perfect, but pretty high, high levels of um um of competence, of of output.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so in the end, it just spiraled out of control, even though we had record amounts of growth in the last year of the company, it was still wasn't enough to um to match our costs.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: We still weren't profitable.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and then once we realized oh, we need to become profitable, I think the the fundamental decision how to get there wasn't shared within the organization, and those decisions were not made in time.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and all of that, I think, eroded a lot of trust.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like we were not able to, I think we were not able to play nice, in all, in all frankness.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so things, I think harmful things were were said and done, and that just deteriorated all trust within the organization and and uh potential um emergency funding, and that in in in in total kind of made it like nobody wants to take the risk in trying to keep the company alive.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that just sounds very complex when you lay it out like that.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was not aware of the uh crazy level of complexity that was involved with the different time zones, different business models.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: It was crazy making.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was really it was really difficult to navigate.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was very difficult to get clarity.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, um, and it was very painful because there was so much at stake, uh you know, so many amazing people's careers.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: We had a lot of students in the program that you know were maybe not able to finish their education.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: We had people investing millions in the company, you know, our reputation, um, you know, the impact on the space as such was something that was really um, you know, with our company, we were other companies that were dependent on us because we were so big and they would be impacted.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was really, really incredibly stressful, and I think it took years.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: for me and some of the other people, um, I think most people in the organization to recover from it in all honesty.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: You said in an interview that uh working on synthesis uh took a lot from you to the point that you got physically ill and you ended up stepping stepping away and working in a garden.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk more about that?
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah so towards the end of the company um I didn't think that the way it was going we were able to turn it around and so I made like I I wasn't able to give up and let that happen.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so the solutions presented to me didn't feel what I wanted for the company.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so I began um in a parallel kind of fashion trying to make a plan B and raise money myself and um with a few people within the company that I felt I trusted and I I could depend on.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that was incredibly tough like trying to you know trying to save the company um and I don't know whether that was the right saving or not um but I I felt incredibly compelled to do that and I almost managed to do that.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: I almost raised enough capital and made I think a plan that would have let the company survive.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah and and last minute it it fell true for certain certain reasons and and I was completely exhausted.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: But by then um you know most people um they they had stepped down like in the last couple weeks um because we we were working in two kind of jurisdictions and our American lawyers said well if you want to avoid any personal risk you gotta you gotta you gotta step down now because now you basically keep the company knowingly in further debt and that's um you can be whole personally liable for that and so basically the whole management team in the US they stepped down and I was the only person in the Netherlands who wasn't in the US and my legal advice was like you can't step down because then you avoiding responsibility and that is illegal in the Netherlands or that that can be held against you.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was kind of the last person on the ship and what happened was well now this company is failing you um we need to file for bankruptcy and now all these students they they need to know what's happening and so I was kind of left semi-alone I had some support um but I had to clean up a lot of the things and I had to make sure the the assets could be uh transferred to a different company to for them to run the training and to for people to continue their education and and so that was that was a huge legal process and um that took uh until like a few months ago where the in the the the the investigations into potential wrongdoing or potential mismanagement were concluded and they didn't find any any uh anything really so I'm glad that's behind us um but all of that together was so incredibly stressful and took so much time and it was so difficult to find ways in which we you know didn't harm people um and so at the end of that I was I was completely burned out and we were very lucky to find a volunteer role at a spiritual um community in Portugal um they needed someone to um take care of the land of the animals and being like an on-site handyman and my wife and I applied and she she cooked for a treat and I worked in the garden and and that was that was really um nourishing for to be to work with the soil and work with the plants and having something very very easeful and slow that was um and having some extra time to deal with all the legal aspects um it was it was something that um couldn't couldn't planned it better if you will because we lost you know we I wasn't paid for a big part of the last few uh like almost four or five months at the end of the company and so we were running out of savings we couldn't afford our home anymore um and so and I I I I didn't have any any energy in me to find a new job or start something new.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a really um amazing gift for us to kind of process everything and to kind of land from the the rocket ship that we that was synthesis.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah um I'm familiar with some of these stories but uh it's really nice to hear them in detail um I appreciate the depth you're going into I want to ask you a potentially a hard question now um maybe you've had it before um I trust you fully and I'm gonna be part of your new program which we're gonna be talking about soon uh as I said to you before the call started the main reason I want to join the program there are other reasons but the main reason is because you're creating it and your way of doing things is that you create things with care.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like you will you that's your kind of creation philosophy.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's everyone has their own style but I know that when you create something you take your time and you would not ever release it unless you thought it was ready to be released.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't release something half cooked um however not everyone has a personal relationship with you.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some people may find you um the synthesis story online um see your name go okay Martine is launching a new program um synthesis came to an abrupt end um there was some fallout some you know chaos around that why why would I want to join this new program you know can I trust this person?
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say to such a person?
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you can talk about some of the things you've learned perhaps in in your journey so far?
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah I don't think there's anything particularly I can say for people to read something like that and then like hey don't believe those articles and trust me I think trust takes time and is very delicate and um I can say that it paints me how synthesis ended and I do try to honor the lessons that I learned from it and I'm not perfect and you know I I will have my blind spots and my own areas of work where where I need to take extra care and not perpetuating harm or or um you know forms of of blindness forms of ignorance and that that's the that's my commitment on the Buddhist path where I I try to honor that and I try to take feedback seriously and um try to integrate that as best I can and that's always an imperfect incomplete process.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: So if people read articles and they feel like hey this is this doesn't feel aligned or that might be uh might be more to the story then that's totally fine and that's you know that if that's important to you then you know don't don't join the program um that's that's uh I I'm not trying necessarily to convince anyone um although I do think that some of the stories that came out you know were pretty sensationalist and jumped to conclusions and you know you can you can look that at the timeline like all the big stories came out two three days after it became public knowledge it was like a deep race towards getting the the first stories out and after that it cut it completely died out.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it was like a very brief moment and I think there's a lot more nuanced aspects that that require just a lot more consideration and and it is something I'm I'm considering like what are the fundamental lessons through synthesis that are important for for quote unquote the psychedelic space to to know about and and those lessons cannot be found in those stories.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: They just can't um the things that I want to honor is there were things with synthesis that I um would not do again.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think there were there was a set of fundamental work that um I didn't do when I started Synthesis that I should have done, but I didn't know that I should have done and I was not capable of doing that because I I hadn't gone through it yet.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's a big thing that I wanted to do with this program is wanting to make sure I I fully understand what I might I what am I designing like what are the the theory of change what's the pedagogy what are the um what are the the the the fundamentals um conditions of the container to make sure this is this is worthwhile for people this is a journey that is is held with a lot of integrity not that synthesis did not do that per se but it it I didn't have the know-how and I think the space maybe didn't have the know-how of how to do that on the level that is I think really required.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: With Synthesis I think a big part was I and my co-founders were at the right place at the right time.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: We saw a trend coming we saw you know there was quote unquote a problem and we we were people who who thought we could solve that.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so one conclusion you can draw from that is it was slightly opportunistic uh oriented.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: And even though there was a lot of idealism and um there was a lot of care as you mentioned it what we we didn't really say okay are we the right people are we ready to do this you know it was kind of assumed we are ready enough and we are kind of the the right people enough but if we had done the work beforehand I think some of the difficulties that we had to like we sometimes mentioned that we were building the plane as we were flying it and it's a it's a common startup philosophy and it it works because you're early you're from a startup viewpoint right you are earlier to market you you have uh you learn some of the um difficult things earlier and then you can um expand quicker um but it's also known that often second generation companies they do much better because they can learn from the first generation companies for much cheaper and so so those are the things that I um I I didn't do with synthesis and also we started as as we went along we didn't necessarily um have the right team from the very beginning and so with it with with my new project one of the things that I felt was really important was thinking about ethics first and making sure I have advisors and teachers who I run things through by to make sure that I am doing this with support on one end but also there is an opportunity for people who are further along the path than I am to kind of point out hey don't don't forget this or look at this or make sure you um handle this and I can I can speak to like hey I I need some support with this because this has happened etc and I didn't have that back then because I you know I mistakenly thought like we could do everything by ourselves and um you know and to last degree that was right but also we we missed some things and so I tried to not miss things this time around even though that's you know it's impossible.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's just by orienting that way you can at least prevent a set of things that you wouldn't have prevented otherwise.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah that's a really honest um answer.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that and yeah there's probably nothing you could say to someone that would just suddenly make them trust you and maybe that's not even something you'd want to do either.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: I like that you have learned things and have now have done things that you didn't know you needed to do when you first started because as we said you were doing something that people hadn't really done before.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: And this story now this the story leads us to your new program.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you took a break after after synthesis you recovered and you came back with something new upiosis and it's a simply put Buddhist and psychedelic transformational container I think you could call it something like that.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you've worked a lot like when I first started talking to you about this you were telling me like I I'm I'm doing a lot of research I'm studying a lot I'm do I'm I'm working with my own mentors this is going to take potentially years to create um you were in no rush to just you know ship something new and get some sign ups this was something that I knew you cared a lot about um what inspired you to create UPiosis well after synthesis I was kind of kicked over the psychedelic space and the kind of the overpromise and under deliver kind of um dominant aspect of the space and I I started um um consulting for a handful of organizations like Synthesis and I noticed a lot of the problems we were facing they were facing and so that for me that helped a lot because it it I could see some of the difficulties we experienced wasn't necessarily us or our own pathologies.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them some of the some of it it was but um a lot of them were kind of inherent to the space and and that's that made me kind of want to step step away for a little bit and and think like do I still want to participate in in this field.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I came back with a with a yes towards that I I I remain that these sacraments if worked with skillfully can have tremendous value and the need for us to find reliable ways of transforming ourselves into more ethical pro-social um relational beings is is more important than ever and what I'm sensing in the in how the world is is is changing these days what the trends are like I think it's gonna be more and more difficult and so what builds resilience what builds care what builds the the pockets of hope if you will and and I think psychedelics will have a very important role to play if we learn how to work with them skillfully and so um so that became a really big question like what does that look like and a few things came up for me um one I think it needs to be rooted in a wisdom tradition like it's like that I think that is the most important thing where people build the ethical slash contemplative skills in order to work through some of the you know the intergenerational trauma for example that we all carry that color our perception and they they condition how the world appears to us in a certain degree in a way that's that's dysfunctional and can we can we take ownership of that can we take ownership of of those projections can we find different models to alleviate some of that suffering and can we can we grow spiritually through difficulties through hardship and for me like I mentioned earlier in the podcast like that path was Buddhist and I think Buddhism is not the only place where um that can happen but it's the one that I'm most familiar with and I do think Buddhist has a few set a few practices or skills or insights that I think lend themselves very very well to psychedelic practice.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was thinking okay um what would what would psychedelics as a skillful means that takes that awakening is a real possibility seriously and is deeply rooted in in you know uh in the dish in in a in a um in in a very solid rigorous manner and so I started designing that and I started to to feel like oh wow this is this is this is a lot of work and I don't I you know after synthesis especially like I don't know if I'm ready for this like um I'm still quite young and and you know I learned a few things but to do this well like that's the most important thing and I I'm not sure if I can do this well so I was pretty hesitant to to put it out in the world um but after you know talking with my mentors and advisors you know I I got the kind of the green light or not you know like you know try it like like this this book's solid what you have designed so far and you know just take it step by step and that has taken like I don't know I think I started thinking about this like two years ago um more completely but you know I've been holding this view of of being being bringing these things together for for over like you know ever since I I was introduced to Buddhism psychedelics so that's 15 years ago and I think a big part as well um was that there have been a lot more teachers over the last few years and especially the last year who have come out and have shared like psychedelics could play an important role on the Buddhist path.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's kind of like twofold like I think for those who have had or are interested in meaningful experience of psychedelics I think Buddhism you don't have to become a Buddhist but I think the Buddhist going through kind of an educational journey can be incredibly helpful in stabilizing those insights or preparing you for a psychedelic experience.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think also maybe this group is a bit smaller that those who are Buddhist or have developed a meditation practice I think psychedelics once you have enough readiness and and enough understanding and it is in the right context can really um illuminate some of the um deeper wisdom that Buddhism has to offer and and that's what I really care about and I feel like that has been such a tremendous gift for me personally and almost anyone will I I walk this journey with feels similar and and then I had you know the last year more teachers have come out and they say the same thing.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so that and then you know looking looking at the research of the last few years regarding psychedelic and meditation there's like a really beautiful convergence there as well that that really resonated with me and informs kind of this whole this whole understanding this whole path and I'm like okay this is this is converging at different points at the same time and to me that's always been a um a sign of readiness like a sign that something like this is ready to be built to be created and so I I I start you know putting it out and and now here we are there's a a potential elephant in the room with this uh fusion of uh psychedelics and Buddhism which I I'm fascinated by this as someone who I study stoicism and I study Buddhism as a hobbyist and I'm always interested in modern applications.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know I'm particularly interested in like how would these philosophies be updated in the modern world.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the precepts in Buddhism says that we should not take into intoxicants and a lot of the very traditional Buddhists would hear psychedelic Buddhism and a Immediately say well, this is going against one of the foundational ethical commitments.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you square those two things?
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a great inquiry, and I think it's a very incredibly rich inquiry.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's not to say psychedelics can never be intoxicants.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm I don't hold that view.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_01: My view, and I think you can find this in Buddhist philosophy very, very well, is that things are independent on other things.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so whether psychedelics are intoxicant or not is dependent on how people use them, who is using them, what's the outcome of using them.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have um a Buddhist-aligned intention and you have a skillful container and you have the wisdom to work with them as a as a true sacrament, in a sacred way, with a lot of care, I don't think it holds to the fifth precept that um it is an intoxicant that leads to heedlessness.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think the evidence does not support that.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I think actually it leads to something else.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_01: It leads to the opposite of heedlessness.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_01: It it leads to insight, it leads to care, it leads to awakening, um, but not inherently.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so um and so it's dependent on causes and conditions.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and so my new project is like, what are all those causes and conditions?
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: And can we can we solve for each one of them?
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it becomes actually becomes skillful in a on the path of awakening.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't mean that's guaranteed for some people, maybe in some moments of the experience, it uh actually does lead to heedlessness.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_01: But that's that's you know, that's okay, because the belief that you can always avoid that in all contexts, I think is is um is not true because you would be a Buddha if that was the case.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we have to be careful around intoxicants all the time.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_01: And there are many, many, many things that are intoxicants, like social media is one, or you know, um, you know, I feel like a lot of Buddhists that are very, very strong criticizing psychedelics as inherently intoxicant, that belief I think is an intoxicant, like a belief of superiority, a belief of knowing something that you may might not have all the all the knowledge about.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so I feel like because of my experiences outside of Buddhism, both in Western philosophy, in interdisciplinary science, specifically around psychedelics, and indigenous forms of knowing, indigenous forms of wisdom that are incredibly um attuned and honoring the wisdom of plants, the wisdom of fungi.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like to just say that category of wisdom is not real wisdom because it did not come from the Buddha Dharma inherently, and we just label it as an intoxicant and basically devalue that wolf set of knowing, that seems um not true to the uh some of the more fundamental uh tenets of Buddhism where you have to be careful thinking you know something when actually you don't.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a great answer.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I think one of the things that comes up a lot is that psychedelics are one of those things that if you haven't experienced them, it's uh I I I don't want to um come across as like um almost like one of these people that's like, you if you haven't done it, you just don't know.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_00: But there really is an element of that.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you have never experienced the psychedelic space, it's very difficult to have a really strong opinion on it as being an intoxicant or not.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think a lot of people have drunk alcohol, so it's quite easy to have an opinion on well, is alcohol an intoxicant?
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_00: But you even if you've never had alcohol, you can quite easily see people that are drunk on the streets and your stories.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's like very commonplace, right?
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's you'd you'd it's easy to have an opinion on that.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas deep, deep sacred psychedelic experiences, unless you are someone who spent many years being part of this, or you've participated in it, how can you really have a strong opinion on it, whether it's an intoxicant or not?
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, so do you agree with that, that that view?
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_01: So even alcohol is is can be a sacrament and can be used wisely, and it's not inherently an intoxicant, but in most cases it is.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think when people criticize psychedelics, they have an image in their mind of you know, Woodstock, people who are completely lost, but they don't have an image of of deep sacred rituals in a cosmology that is led by elders and is imparts deep intergenerational wisdom upon the younger generation.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so it really matters how you hold things, and and that requires a level of nuance and a delicateness and a sensitivity that is unquestioned, you just take on whatever your culture believes about certain things, and and so it's very easy to um reify certain substances and say, well, that's just a class of um molecules that are inherently something.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_01: But that that's not that's not that's not the Buddhist view.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um nothing is inherently anything.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and that that essence should lead to liberation and a deep sense of ontological openness.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the beauty of a Buddhist tradition like Buddhism.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, that's not you can't find that everywhere because anywhere where people go, people adopt certain beliefs and they hold that as superior, and then they do that to judge other people with, and often in their own favor.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's one of the tendencies that you know Buddhism tries to teach.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually where you know the real liberation can come, like we can see that accurately and see that that's also a cause of suffering.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it that's one of the hardest places to actually look and to actually do the work.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and so I think we're we're gonna have this discussion um more and more.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I know, I know there are I know a lot of people who found the Buddhist path through psychedelics.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_01: I know it was in the 1780s, it was very popular to say, I found my path to Buddhism through psychedelics, but once I'm on the path, I don't need them anymore.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's probably true for for a very limited set of teachers who you know have gone very, very deep on the path.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I think on the path and um they they visionary experiences can be used skillfully, and and that there is a lot of precedents in Buddhism that there are valid modes of visionary experience, and I don't see anything inherently um denying that psychedelics uh can play that role.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well said.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um can we just double-click on the whole uh focus on Buddhism?
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because you could have hit psychedelics with lots of different types of frameworks, for example, shamanism, different aspects of psychology, neuroscience.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_00: W what is it that Buddhism brings to the table when it's combined with psychedelics that other frameworks don't?
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't I I wouldn't say that other frameworks inherently don't.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_01: I know there are a few organizations that are currently working with psychedelics in Christianity, in Islam, in Judaism, um and the my organ, my new organization is not the only one who works with psychedelics and Buddhism.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_01: I so there are a few things for me, like I know Buddhism the best.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one aspect.
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_01: I also think it's one of the most sophisticated forms of philosophy.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so the part of me that wants to understand things rationally and needs that level of evidence is very satisfied with the depth that Buddhism has to offer.
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something I haven't found in other aspects or some of the assumptions of other traditions, they they just for me personally haven't resonated in the same way.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um so those aspects are kind of the the stage, the biased stage that made me gravitate towards Buddhism.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I think there are a few aspects of Buddhism that I really value.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_01: One are the the immense depth and precision of the meditative path.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that is something that I've tasted the fruits of myself, and it's something that really works.
• 1:16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like what's beautiful about the Buddha Dharma is that it liberates, and it liber it can liberate our own minds.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the amount of tendencies that I grew up with that are just not present for me anymore is enormous.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And my happiness, my my level of well-being, my contentedness, my care, my capacity for care has grown so much that I don't know where I would have been without this tradition.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that is incredibly special.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then the aspect that I mentioned before, like I think Buddhism has a way to work with valid modes of visionary experience.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that has really helped me personally on my path with psychedelics to to stabilize those insights, to deepen those insights, and to make sure I I I didn't fall prey to forms of inflation, for example, to take um to take these experiences like ah now I am now I am special because I had this special experience.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's always a tendency that's very um very common, that temptation, but the practices that Buddhists offer allow you to see that from a very high resolution and um and um very um um yeah, very high resolution in such a way that it becomes very clear that that's actually not something you want.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's not something that you want to um believe in because it's clear it clearly leads to certain outcomes that lead further into delusion, and delusion does not end well.
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_01: So um those are the things that I'd say are important, and then you know there's a lot of like uh pro-social ethics within Buddhism that maybe aren't found in shamanism in such a way, and and some of the shamanistic kind of ontologies, they're hard to integrate for modern people.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think actually if you have a Buddhist base, um you can much more skillfully approach forms of shamanism as well.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then at least you have the philosophical foundation to not um reify things, to to essentialize things, and and um it's it's a very nuanced topic, but it it's something that you have to be careful around, especially with psychedelics, because you know, the common example is well, the ayahuasca told me XYZ, you know, they they might make you remember things that might never happen, or they might think you have a certain set of competence simply because you were divinely chosen something, but you you don't have that competence.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and if it if it's not rooted in uh wisdom tradition or classically in a shamanistic tradition in a form of apprenticeship where there are multi-generational support and many years of of guidance, like people can drift, people can start believing things, and you know, there are plenty of examples of facilitators that um start bel you know, start believing their own height, and it tends not to end well, and it's just not something like it's not something we can afford to play loosely with, I think.
• 1:20:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um well I I remember when I I the first time I experienced sila cybern was with you, and I remember one of the biggest insights I had was that um I felt closer to the philosophy of Buddhism.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I just it sort of connected with me in it in a way that um hadn't before.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was almost like a kind of a oh, I kind of get it a bit more, this kind of feeling.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can't intellectually explain it, but it's I guess that's more of like an insight.
• 1:20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's there's a like we are always already completely embodied in an interconnected, independent way.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_01: But through our development, through language, through identity, through the ego structure, we especially in the modern kind of sense, we we we tend to view the world or experience the world in the sense that like we're buffered, buffered from the outside.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens with psychedelics, they develop some of those higher order beliefs that envelop kind of the bottom-up sensory um um data sensory data impressions.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so the way we make sense of the world is very much conditioned by um our ontological commitments.
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do we think our world is?
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think knowledge is, what do we think time and our and identity is?
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_01: And psychedelics kind of reliably kind of dissolved that in a way where you kind of have more a fresh perspective, and then you realize, wait a minute, I am partly my ancestors, like I experienced with ayahuasca with my grandfather and my father.
• 1:22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like they are living through me.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Their experiences are my identity that I normally identify with.
• 1:22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um I am, you know, the very common experience, like I am the trees, you know.
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds very woo-hoo and spiritual, but at the same time, we realize, wow, I can only exist independence of my environment, of all the my relations.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And and that requires a level of care, a level of ethics.
• 1:22:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you can know that intellectually, but that's not the same as having like this openness where you suddenly realize, wow, I am at the same time a lot more than I ever thought I was, and a lot less than I thought I ever was.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I think psychedelics shine because they can provide a level of insight and care and um openness that you know is sometimes hard to hard to experience otherwise.
• 1:23:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's gonna be people listening that might have done psychedelics before.
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um maybe also, I would imagine, um, some long-term meditators as well.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And a common experience is that there's been some powerful moments, but there's this feeling of plateauing or like not getting to the next level or feeling stuck.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_00: What is the missing missing ingredient for these types of individuals?
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think a really important aspect is that they're in the psychedelic space as such, and and in kind of the Western ontology is they prioritize experience.
• 1:23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's always like, okay, I need to um find or cultivate or somehow consume these these peak experience or these insights, and what is missed is that it doesn't necessarily teach that those insights basically um call upon us to change our whole relationship to experience.
• 1:24:24
  SPEAKER_01: So experience and psychological is just not enough.
• 1:24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Integration means we need to take those insights and then really um think and understand them on a level that they impact um the way we relate to our own needs, our own emotions, to other people, to our wider ethical responsibility in community and beyond.
• 1:24:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that can happen through psychedelics, and I you know it I've seen it happen, but it's not necessarily very explicit.
• 1:25:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is exactly one of those bridges where wisdom physicians can help um folks when they have these insights, like, okay, what does it actually say about the nature of mind, about reality?
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And once we get that clear, it's like okay, how do we then deepen that insight and make it part of us and really integrate that?
• 1:25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, if the answer is, well, keep doing psychedelics and nothing else, I don't think that works or doesn't work in most cases.
• 1:25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so then it then it requires something else.
• 1:25:42
  SPEAKER_01: It requires, you know, classically with psychedelics, you do dieta, which is a form of of um plant-enhanced deep contemplation in community with support with the teacher.
• 1:25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, that that already provides a lot more conditions for for these insights to deepen and actually um impact someone's life on on a very fundamental level.
• 1:26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um but just going to retreats here and there and not building a relationship with the people, with the teacher, or with the tradition, I think some really important ingredients are missed.
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's kind of the the juncture I feel like the psychedelic field is kind of in right now, where there was this big hype around, you know, psychedelics will cure everything, um, to a much more nuanced view.
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, well, they can create these openings, but then still there's that's significant work to be done.
• 1:26:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the question is, how do we do that work?
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think um, you know, therapy is a very can be very beautiful modality, but therapy kind of misses the wider um existential questions around working with you know the spiritual conditions of our lives, like what happens after death, like what is our purpose in life, etc.
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it doesn't really provide the the possibility that awakening is possible.
• 1:27:12
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't provide the spiritual growth aspect, or it can, but not not very explicitly.
• 1:27:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a wisdom tradition um and doesn't have to be Buddhist, but a wisdom tradition can provide that, and I think um that helps um the whole process of working with psychedelics in a very different way.
• 1:27:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think that we've we've circled around the upiosis, we've kind of been talking about it a bit indirectly, but maybe we can talk a bit more practically about the program.
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um you describe it as a path between worlds.
• 1:27:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very epic vision, you know, like it's 12 months.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's uh it's yeah, I appreciate how ambitious it is, you know, like it really does s be strike me as something that is going to be life-changing.
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's like you said, it's it's an investment of time and money, but it's not overpriced.
• 1:28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the, you know, it's not like you're you're asking people to uh commit 10 hours a day or anything.
• 1:28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I believe there's uh we can maybe we can just talk about the details.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's uh there's gonna be weekly two-hour sessions, right?
• 1:28:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the investment for the 12 months is 1,200 euros, which is over the course of 12 months is not really that much.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um what are people gonna be doing on this program week to week?
• 1:28:45
  SPEAKER_00: What does it actually look like?
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks.
• 1:28:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um thanks for the kind introduction towards the program.
• 1:28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um It's so yeah, it's a twelve month container and it consists of month like weekly calls, and on average the first week we'll have a two-hour kind of theory lecture on kind of some of the fundamental principles around the uh Buddhist less kind of modern uh neuroscience approach to how does our mind work?
• 1:29:24
  SPEAKER_01: What what creates liberation, what creates suffering, and can we work with that?
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Can we create can we first begin to understand a clear map, kind of what's happening in in our internal psyche?
• 1:29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And once we have the map, we can start practicing a progression, you know, meditation progression that very, very clearly allows us to see like, oh, this is something that leads to confusion and unclarity and attachment and aversion, and this leads to insight and liberation and freedom and spaciousness and ease.
• 1:30:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and so it's a big kind of two-pronged journey where we have the understanding of some of the aspects of Buddhism that I think are are really beautiful and insightful, and then applying that in practice, and then of course integrating that in our daily lives.
• 1:30:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of the overall program.
• 1:30:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh theory first week, second week is around practice, and so we'll practice together, we'll talk about why we practice, the understanding of it.
• 1:30:40
  SPEAKER_01: The third week we will be supported by a guest teacher.
• 1:30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um I am incredibly fortunate that um uh about 10 um guest teachers who are lineage holders, who are in teachers for decades, who also all have personal experience with psychedelics, come from different Buddhist traditions, are um teaching in the program.
• 1:31:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I'm just starting out, so I consider them to be the gems within the organ uh within the um within the program.
• 1:31:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that's an opportunity to kind of hear it from different viewpoints, from different experiences, like a very rich buffet um that together create um all these different ways of looking, this facet, like almost like a diamond that has all these sides to it.
• 1:31:35
  SPEAKER_01: And together, hopefully, it something will click and resonate.
• 1:31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then the fourth week will be more community-based, more towards like, hey, how's your practice going?
• 1:31:46
  SPEAKER_01: What are you seeing?
• 1:31:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really much there's so much wisdom in the cohort already.
• 1:31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I'm gonna step more outside and let the the wisdom of the crowd speak.
• 1:31:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so that that's the part I'm really excited about because um something amazing happens when a community comes together that are all oriented towards virtue.
• 1:32:09
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's the you know, the fundamental definition of the Sangha.
• 1:32:13
  SPEAKER_01: The Sangha is those who are oriented towards um towards liberation, and not just as a selfish approach, but as a as an understanding that um we are much larger, not our ego selves, our identity, but our beings, we are such a mysterious network that's so far-reaching.
• 1:32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um if we act on behalf of that, something magical happens.
• 1:32:39
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, that that's been professed by all the sages of the tradition, and I found it to be true, and and hopefully that that will be a seed or like a light that can you know light everybody's kind of inner um illuminate everybody's inner divine nature, and by recognizing that for ourselves, we can recognize it in others, and that's how something really um sacred um you know um originates.
• 1:33:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a emergent property of a sun guys is that there's more light in the world.
• 1:33:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's like that's like a monthly cadence, and we'll learn kind of the fundament some of the fundamental Buddhist philosophies, practices that together over time build, I think, the contemplative skill set to begin working with psychedelics uh skillfully uh on the support of these senior teachers.
• 1:33:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then towards the end of the program, there is an optional, like nobody has to work with psychedelics, it's completely optional.
• 1:33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I know most people have a psychedelic practice or they have interest in developing that, and so there will be a optional retreat towards the end of the program with its own kind of container um where people can work uh with people from the cohort on retreat um in a meditative Buddhist Dharma context to work with the sacraments, and so I think that will be incredibly um special as well.
• 1:34:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that is super exciting.
• 1:34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm super looking forward to this.
• 1:34:22
  SPEAKER_00: You've described how things are gonna look on a kind of week-to-week basis, but if we zoom out and look at the year overall, you sent me a PDF which has a lot of information in, um which was kind of like the I guess the blueprint for this program.
• 1:34:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems like you've structured the year in a very specific sequence.
• 1:34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:34:42
  SPEAKER_00: You have Samadhi, Vipassana, um Brahm I how do you say this?
• 1:34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Brahma Brahmaviharas.
• 1:34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Brahmaviharas, okay.
• 1:34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Emptiness, animism, tantra, and you end with Zochen.
• 1:34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um what's the logic of this order?
• 1:35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like why that specific progression?
• 1:35:05
  SPEAKER_01: So this is uh this is not something I came up with.
• 1:35:08
  SPEAKER_01: I I creatively stole this from um from a specific school in Buddhism um called the Nyingma school, which is something I deeply trained in in the last few years.
• 1:35:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the part of that is to try and get practitioners to the fundamental realization that they are already awakened and to basically recognize their own Buddha nature, their own nature of mind, their pristine awareness.
• 1:35:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of the penultimate aim of the tradition.
• 1:35:49
  SPEAKER_01: And there are many, many ways to get there.
• 1:35:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um and some of them resonate more than than others, but there is there's a pretty reliable path to get there, or at least to get there enough that it becomes part of your being and and it will unfold by itself over time.
• 1:36:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so that that to me seemed like the most important um outcome possible.
• 1:36:16
  SPEAKER_01: That um people would understand the path, the options available, and could play with the skillful means that are most important to them.
• 1:36:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like we only have a year, year sounds long, it's not that long, actually.
• 1:36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it hopefully provides some seats that people can take, you know, to other teachers.
• 1:36:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like all these teachers have their own programs, and I would be more than happy to um support and recommend for what's right for them.
• 1:36:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um but there there is what I found before I found this edition and got this clarity.
• 1:36:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was doing, you know, I I was practicing pre-devotionally and I was kind of on my way, but I didn't fully understand why I was doing when I was doing it until I got kind of towards the end and I looked back and I was like, wait a minute, there there is there is uh there is some clarity here that I can see the path now.
• 1:37:15
  SPEAKER_01: And and so it follows uh um it follows this this progress where we develop the contemplative skills to recognize our own non-dual awareness, and it provides the clarity of the map to understand this is what we're traversing, this is the the map the map we're we're um using to to navigate our kind of our our own being, our own interiority.
• 1:37:44
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so it it it is pretty classically, but it it has some has some in-between steps that I think will make it a lot easier for people to kind of um a couple things.
• 1:37:59
  SPEAKER_01: One to whatever their um their their experience already with meditation and psychedelic is to kind of slot that in into the program and recognize like, oh, I've I've I already have a lot of insight and clarity, and this fits into the path here.
• 1:38:17
  SPEAKER_01: And here maybe I don't have so much clarity, and so this is this is where I can I should focus next.
• 1:38:23
  SPEAKER_01: So having a clear clear map, I think, is really important.
• 1:38:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um and second is to create like uh to develop these pretty well-rounded practitioners.
• 1:38:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like we often tend to think meditation is one thing, it's it's not, it's it's a whole range of things, and they need to be kind of balanced at some level to really develop the proper level of insight and transformation.
• 1:38:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you miss a few things, you know, you can develop lopsidedly, and that is you know, people can get stuck, and that's not necessarily very helpful.
• 1:39:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, the the goal is towards towards Jokchen, which is called the Great Perfection, which is I think the most profound Buddhist teachings available, and it's not something you can get easily, and so that basically the big part of the program is preparation in order for people to kind of get accustomed to the preliminaries towards being open um and ready to receive those teachings.
• 1:39:31
  SPEAKER_00: What about the uh the ecodelics part?
• 1:39:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because I think uh the one of the the books you recommended to me when we first started speaking is The Spell of the Sensuous David Abraham.
• 1:39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um is his work part of this experience?
• 1:39:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because you in month seven you have the world which sees us, animism and the power of attention.
• 1:39:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so um I wrote my thesis on on that book actually, and it is I think one way in which we can wake up our senses and our sense of interbeing, our interconnectedness.
• 1:40:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the view that inherently in perception without mental conceptual overlays, like the world is animistic in nature.
• 1:40:25
  SPEAKER_01: And by recognizing that and embodying that, um suddenly a huge level of creativity, of participation, of mystery can open up that wasn't available if you come out from a um the very deeply materialistic viewpoint.
• 1:40:44
  SPEAKER_01: And um and so to but we need it takes time to understand that it's it's very well philosophically um uh supported, but it's not just a belief you can take over, it's not a belief that that takes over another belief, it it's a it's a participation embodied recognition, and and it's something that I think is important to our ethical relationship to to the world, to other beings, but primarily.
• 1:41:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's something that I think a lot of modern people have gotten blind to simply because it's not part of our reality.
• 1:41:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's not we don't have the language for it, we don't have the practices, we don't have the worldview, and and I don't think it's any surprise that the ecological crisis and emergency that we're that we're in right now, and is seemingly only getting worse, it's gonna really impact our lives more and more.
• 1:41:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh it's basically one of the major um drivers and functions of geopolitical conflict around food security, around and it's all rooted in our inability to honor other beings as other beings as opposed to um their functional utility for human endeavors.
• 1:42:09
  SPEAKER_01: And and so the animism is both a personal invitation to awaken to a more magical reality with a lot of different beings, um, and recognition of our ethical responsibility towards uh um beings that don't have a voice.
• 1:42:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that that really resonates with um the bodhisattva ideal in Buddhism to you know reduce the suffering in the world and to support other beings and their well-being.
• 1:42:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it also um I think is an answer, a possible answer, a possible openness towards our current ethical um dilemma um in a world where we are very um blind to the exploitation of other beings um for our own kind of comfort.
• 1:43:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it's something that's not inherently not sustainable, and so we need to find different paradigms, different ontologies to work with that uh voluntarily or involuntarily over time, because it's not sustainable, so it will end.
• 1:43:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have to, we're I think very deeply compelled to to move out of these paradigms and don't work anymore.
• 1:43:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think animism is a kind of level playing ground from which something like that can arise.
• 1:43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, wow, that's beautiful.
• 1:43:41
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that I'm glad you cleared that up because for a lot of people that would be the when when they look at the program, that that would be the the piece that they'd probably be curious about, right?
• 1:43:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there's Buddhism, psychedelics, but then there's this other it feels like an other world, you know.
• 1:43:56
  SPEAKER_00: How how does it relate to um ecology and nature and the world at large and your perspective on how we relate to to these things?
• 1:44:06
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I'm glad you cleared that up because I was really curious about that.
• 1:44:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um so let's talk about the transformation that people can expect.
• 1:44:13
  SPEAKER_00: If someone were to complete this year, they show up, they do the work.
• 1:44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, if someone doesn't try, you know, like with anything, they're not you can't expect much.
• 1:44:23
  SPEAKER_00: If someone really shows up, does the work, commits, what will be different about them in January 2027?
• 1:44:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I I appreciate you emphasizing that it is a part where you get out what you put in.
• 1:44:41
  SPEAKER_01: And um it's like mastery of anything.
• 1:44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can't learn playing the piano by just reading books you gotta practice.
• 1:44:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not suggesting that I know what is right for people to practice, but I do know practice is important.
• 1:44:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so the main I think there are a few things that I hope people will get out of it.
• 1:45:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, of course, there's never a guarantee, but but one is to know what liberation is and the path of liberation, and start liberating some of the the tendencies of mind that lead to, you know, um conflict, misunderstanding, aggression, um, like things that cause a lot of harm, not just interpersonally, but also within ourselves.
• 1:45:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like we sometimes can be so incredibly hard on ourselves, and we can set impossible standards, and we can try to manage our emotions in ways that you know, just how we learn to manage them, but they are not necessarily very healthy long term, and they don't lead to wisdom, and they might lead to you know health complications or interpersonal issues that um can be avoided.
• 1:46:01
  SPEAKER_01: So getting clear on that and and um adopting maybe more skillful models uh and also understanding the intimate models, I think that is incredibly liberating.
• 1:46:14
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so that that would be great.
• 1:46:17
  SPEAKER_01: I hope people can begin to reliably access states of mind that are very nurturing.
• 1:46:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and nurturing, nourishing.
• 1:46:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, there they're there are some states that are just very uh evil, and so getting back on the cushion to practice can be something that's um really helps to manage our nervous system, it helps to get clarity in situations that we're unclear about, it helps us to get a sense of well-being that's sustainable and outs can be brought outside of the mat.
• 1:46:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, there are a set of valid visionary experiences that people can access and opening up to the imagination or imaginary as a creative force um that can inform their lives.
• 1:47:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's something that is a tremendous capacity that humans have, but not often do we learn how to work skillfully with that.
• 1:47:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's beautiful.
• 1:47:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's one aspect.
• 1:47:22
  SPEAKER_01: The other aspect, if people want to build a personal psychedelic practice, like how to do that, something that is um bring brings in the sacredness and the intentionality and the skillfulness that's required to do that on a competent level.
• 1:47:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think understanding that on a on a on a um on a wide variety of approaches, I think, can really um inform people's practice.
• 1:47:49
  SPEAKER_01: So meditate meditative practice, optional psychedelic practice, and then a um um you know supported in community supported in in lineage, and then towards the end of the program, a sense of of uh responsibility towards um you know their own specific set of circumstances in their lives.
• 1:48:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like it fundamentally matters how you show up.
• 1:48:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, this this program might sound epic, but it's it's not necessarily meant to be epic.
• 1:48:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's more in the sense that like most of the time that we spend, we only spend it with maybe a dozen people or so, you know, and and the person we spend the most of time with is ourselves.
• 1:48:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so if we can learn to transform our minds and become more awake and take more responsibility and understand the ethical implications of our actions and deeper, more um sensitive, um, refined level, then we basically change our whole world.
• 1:48:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like every like it it um we open up a different ontological um way of what is actually happening, and and that's the real gift.
• 1:49:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think if that people can just experience a glimpse of that, that that's possible, I would be very, very happy.
• 1:49:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that we have different approaches to get people there.
• 1:49:21
  SPEAKER_01: And perhaps that will lead into you know a part of maybe consideration that yes, we need to take care of our own family and our our jobs and our livelihood, but we might have a bit of time to, you know, to volunteer in causes that we believe in and meet other people like that and organize and uh sit in council or you know, give mentorship or other things.
• 1:49:52
  SPEAKER_01: And even a little bit like that can be a huge difference for someone else.
• 1:49:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and see kind of the the magic that happens when we um don't put ourselves above everything, our own needs, but also think about like what are the independent needs in my actual living conditions.
• 1:50:16
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing, nothing grander, nothing grand but you know, vaunting at school or supporting a rewilding project, or figuring out how to forage some of our food, or to um protest certain chemicals that are polluting the world, like all those little things um matter because we only need very small concentrated um groups and momentum to change really radical things.
• 1:50:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's you know that's been proven in in many many fields.
• 1:50:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so every single one of us matters deeply how we show up.
• 1:50:53
  SPEAKER_01: Mad at it deeply, and that starts with training on the cushion and it deepens into integration of our lives, and you know, it leads into building real wisdom and becoming elders once we get older.
• 1:51:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that is one of the more beautiful capacities that we humans have, and it's not something that is very available to learn um you know through school or through our media or uh other other you know other institutions.
• 1:51:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think psychedelics uniquely kind of open up the importance of that for a lot of people.
• 1:51:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then the question is like, how do we how do we walk that path?
• 1:51:37
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:51:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what about the the communal aspect of this?
• 1:51:43
  SPEAKER_00: I know there's like a Sangha, there's gonna be other individuals, it's not a sort of go at you, you know, you're on on your own in this, there's a community platform.
• 1:51:51
  SPEAKER_00: How important is the community, the collective element versus the individual practice?
• 1:51:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:51:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so um there is a there's a famous uh sutta sutra, um, depending on Pali or Sanskrit, that um the cousin of the Buddha Ananda, who was also his personal um attendee, he um he is known that he had a perfect memory and he could recite even with a specific intonation, the teachings that the Buddha gave.
• 1:52:28
  SPEAKER_01: And one day, Ananda would um would go to the Buddha and say, I think I got it, I think I understand.
• 1:52:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think spiritual friendship is like half of the spiritual path.
• 1:52:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the Buddha kind of kind of scolds him a little bit and says, Don't say that, Ananda, don't don't say that.
• 1:52:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's not that's not quite true.
• 1:52:51
  SPEAKER_01: Spiritual friendship is the whole of the path.
• 1:52:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it it points to a few facets about this that I think is sometimes hard to realize for us.
• 1:53:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um people who are grow up in the West, we're individualized, we have this buffered self, and you know, we think we are independent and we have personal agency.
• 1:53:14
  SPEAKER_01: And what we don't see is we are actually a network and we are dependent on all these other people and all their insight and all their support and their permission and their acknowledgement and their recognition and their support and their wisdom.
• 1:53:31
  SPEAKER_01: And bringing all those people and practices and their histories and their insights all of it together, you build a container or a momentum or a emergent phenomenon that can bring the individual much, much further along than you can do alone ever.
• 1:53:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is why there's such a big emphasis on having a teacher.
• 1:53:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like traditionally, one of the things that, like, I'm not gonna ask anyone to do this officially, but it is one of the key contemplations, which is in Buddhism, you become a Buddhist by taking refuge.
• 1:54:08
  SPEAKER_01: And why do you need to take refuge?
• 1:54:11
  SPEAKER_01: What you know what what are you taking refuge from and what are you taking refuge in?
• 1:54:16
  SPEAKER_01: And classically that's that's seen as the Buddha Dharma Sangha.
• 1:54:20
  SPEAKER_01: Some places say also Buddha Dharma Sangha and all other beings, because you cannot survive alone for very long.
• 1:54:29
  SPEAKER_01: You need plants that give up their lives to feed you.
• 1:54:32
  SPEAKER_01: You need the sunlight, you need the air, you need you know, all these things that other people do, even some, you know, even delivering your your package online or taking away your garbage or pollinators.
• 1:54:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like we are an expression of that whole infinite web, the intrasnet, if you will, and and so honoring that insight um by by taking refuge in the the teachings that liberate in the the ideal, if you will, or the example of the Buddha, and in everyone else who is a um is a committed member of trying to figure this out and trying to do their best in in on their path is is something that um is is the whole of the spiritual path.
• 1:55:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so the I've been incredibly heartened to talk with all the participants so far, and the the the depth of insight and care and practice history has been really, really touching.
• 1:55:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and it you know, this program could not exist without people like you, John.
• 1:55:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you wouldn't join and a few other, it wouldn't be a program.
• 1:55:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so so this is much more a co-creation.
• 1:56:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think maybe that's one of the fundamental insights where maybe in the beginning you was like, oh, I'm signing up for a program, and I I'm you know, often we take this assumption I'm just a passive learner.
• 1:56:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm here and I receive things from the program.
• 1:56:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think that's quite true.
• 1:56:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think because you you participate, you co-create and you influence everything else, and that together creates something unique that couldn't exist otherwise.
• 1:56:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so community the Sangha, it's um it's often all the programs I developed and all the um the programs I participated in, it's always the thing that surprises people the most.
• 1:56:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, I didn't sign up because beforehand you don't know any of the other participants, right?
• 1:56:51
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you know?
• 1:56:52
  SPEAKER_01: But then later on, they say all my connections were kind of the most important aspect of the whole program.
• 1:56:59
  SPEAKER_01: And um and I think that's really beautiful.
• 1:57:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of takes up the pressure for me as well to feel like I need to provide all the value because that's that's just simply not true.
• 1:57:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a hundred percent the case with the the retreats that I've been on and the code that I've done.
• 1:57:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:57:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh you're not joining for those relationships explicitly, but you're all working towards a similar goal, and you're you're bonding through that experience, and there's just something just really beautiful about that.
• 1:57:36
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, like lifelong friends can be made along the process.
• 1:57:40
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, there are I I think a few people joining Upaiosis that are my friends now that I met on the different cohorts and retreats, which is in a kind of like a funny, funny way that that works out.
• 1:57:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:57:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's really cool.
• 1:57:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's like a handful of maybe uh I I've been also very um honored that there's like ten people or so that I know very well that I feel like you know could create a program like this themselves, are joining this program.
• 1:58:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so I know they have so much like yourself has so much to offer.
• 1:58:17
  SPEAKER_01: And um I think it's gonna be incredibly sweet.
• 1:58:21
  SPEAKER_01: And and we actually um we'll we'll we'll find out in a few days because uh or uh let's say it's Saturday now, Saturday, the 3rd of January, and we're starting on the 8th.
• 1:58:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we're starting very soon and we'll we'll have this very nice uh easy uh introduction uh session in uh in a few days.
• 1:58:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I said at the beginning of this podcast one of the reasons I was drawn to joining Upiosis was because of the way that you create.
• 1:58:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and this has been the case for many, many years.
• 1:58:55
  SPEAKER_00: As long as I've known you, I remember writing an article, and then I would be thinking it's finished, it's ready to go, and I'd show you, and you were like, I don't know, I think I think this might need to be fleshed out, and I would be frustrated, but also what is the rush?
• 1:59:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, but I mean it's good though.
• 1:59:13
  SPEAKER_00: What is the rush?
• 1:59:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you ship something that isn't quite there?
• 1:59:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you've created uh an audio course on procrastination that is like the definitive guide to procrastination.
• 1:59:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the everything you would ever need to know about procrastination is in this course, and you didn't do it because you were like, Oh, I need to I need to, you know, sell a course and make some money.
• 1:59:35
  SPEAKER_00: You were like, No, I want to create something that is primarily very useful to people because I struggled with this.
• 1:59:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just the way you do things.
• 1:59:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I have a lot of trust in that process, in the creative process that you have, and I'm excited for many reasons, but that is one of the reasons I'm I'm drawn to this uh retreat.
• 1:59:53
  SPEAKER_00: So can you tell uh how can you tell people about how they can get in touch with you or join?
• 2:00:00
  SPEAKER_00: I know we're getting close to the date that it's starting, depending on when people are listening to this.
• 2:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it starts pretty soon.
• 2:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um please visit the website upiosis.com and then go to a path between worlds so you can Google it and you find it.
• 2:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: And um applications will close very soon.
• 2:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: But if there's really intent, like hey, you feel like this is really resonating, um you know, just drop me a message and we can we can figure something out if there are still spots left.
• 2:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because um we're getting quite uh towards the um um um size of the cohort where we can't accept any more people.
• 2:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it will always be next year, so this is um you know not in the next few days, but beyond that, and you listen to this, um, you know, just sign up for the newsletter and be in touch and um because it's something that I spent so much time developing, it's it's very likely I will I'll do another year of this at the very least.
• 2:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I know as well that you you care deeply about this work and people that wanna do this kind of work, and I'm sure if anyone reaches out to you that are very serious about this, um, you know, people that are very committed to this path, you you could add them um to some sort of list or just kind of stay in touch with them if you have anything else coming up or any spaces for anything opening up as well.
• 2:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think if you if you feel very aligned with this, there is probably late registration options that we can discuss, and that that needs to be on an individual basis.
• 2:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um and beyond that, I am happy to recommend other forms of prepar prepar preparing or working.
• 2:01:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's always I'm always happy to help to anyone who's uh genuinely uh curious about this.
• 2:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like you don't need you don't need a big background, uh but a um a real longing to to deepen your practice and to walk this path.
• 2:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I I'm so every time like uh there's this one of the Brahma Fiharas that we just mentioned is uh empathetic joy, and it means to to relish and savor the the beauty in others or the benefit people experience or their their fortune, and it's kind of the antidote to jealousy.
• 2:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and all these things are just a habit, like jealousy and and comparison is not inherently found in reality, it's something we learn.
• 2:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: But that means we can unlearn it and we can adopt a more more wise approach to it.
• 2:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I one of the things that that triggers that the most strongly with me is people who who are genuinely um approaching this with reverence and care.
• 2:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think that unifies this cohort.
• 2:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so I'm I'm very pleased, very pleased with um everyone who's signed up so far, and and I think anyone I will be working with over the next year, years.
• 2:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 2:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay, well I'll I'll provide links uh in the in the show notes, a description, and if you for whatever reason can't access that, uh you can Google A Path Between Worlds and Upeiosis, U-P-A-Y-O-S-I-S.
• 2:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, um get in touch, and uh I really appreciate the two-hour and ten minute uh discussion, Martin.
• 2:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: I know that I've asked a lot of questions and hope that I haven't pushed you too hard, but um I thought it was data.
• 2:04:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Jan.
• 2:04:01
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate the opportunity for me to connect with um you know your audience, and I I um I knew this was coming because I don't know if you remember, but we we used to have a nickname for you or a kind of an an honorary uh prefix, which was uh Jan who asked, you know, asked the best questions in the world.
• 2:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes you would be quiet for, you know, people be and someone else would be discussing for a very long time, and you'd be just quiet, quiet, quiet, and you would drop something and it's like oh shit, we nobody thought about this before.
• 2:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: It is like really important, and it just opened up this quality of of care, like it really felt like you were really deep listening, and and I really appreciated our conversation here as well.
• 2:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much.
• 2:04:53
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for um giving me the time here and also for joining a program.
• 2:04:58
  SPEAKER_01: I I really respect you, and that you would decide to join something that I've created is is such a big compliment, and um it really I really it really motivates me beyond being intrinsically motivated because I like I said I care and I care about this working for you and and so um it it it it really like I couldn't do this without you like you're my Sangha, like my spiritual formation is dependent on your participation and vice versa, and I'm noticing that very deeply in me, and um and that helps me to become um you know the the spiritual friend that I hope to be for people in this co-work.
• 2:05:48
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much and I'm looking really looking forward to a really special year together.
• 2:05:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm super excited for it, and I I'm someone who creates meditations of my own and talks and I share insights that I've had about philosophy, and I think it's really important if you're going to be doing that kind of thing, to be putting in the work yourself.
• 2:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: I never want to be that kind of person that uh you know just sort of tells other people to do these things, but then I'm not doing it myself.
• 2:06:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this is this is an opportunity to deepen my practice as well and hopefully share the fruits of my experience with others as well, so we can pay it forward.
• 2:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I'm excited.
• 2:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um my audience will be hearing updates throughout the year about this.
• 2:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, uh thanks Martin.
• 2:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
• 2:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Jan.
• 2:06:41
  SPEAKER_01: Have a good day.
• 2:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you too.
• 2:06:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that was my conversation with Martin Schupp.
• 2:06:47
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you got as much from that conversation as I did.
• 2:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you're curious about the program we discussed, A Path Between Worlds, you can find it at upiosis.com.
• 2:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's U-P-A-Y-O-S-I-S.com.
• 2:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: The program will be starting very soon, early in January, and it lasts for twelve months.
• 2:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you're hearing this later, Martine does mention, of course, that he's likely to run it again, and there may be a possibility of a late application.
• 2:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll be sharing updates about my own experience in the program throughout the year.
• 2:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: If that interests you, make sure that you're subscribed.
• 2:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that stuck with me from this conversation is that Martine said he's no longer a seeker.
• 2:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's found what he's looking for, and now it's just about deepening that.
• 2:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's a striking thing to say, and I'm curious to see what a year of practice alongside him reveals for me.
• 2:07:43
  SPEAKER_00: As always, I appreciate you listening, and I'll see you in the next one.