The Mapp
Life is a journey, and every journey needs a guide—or at least a good story. Welcome to The Mapp, hosted by Michael Pursley, where we navigate the messy, beautiful business of being human. The podcast's name is a nod to both Michael A. Pursley Podcast and the "maps of meaning" that help us find our way in life.
Born during the stillness of the COVID-19 lockdowns, The Mapp emerged from Michael’s hunger for understanding. Inspired by long-form conversations that spark insights and refine ideas, Michael dives into deep, authentic dialogues with curiosity and humor. From life’s profound mysteries to its absurdities, nothing is off-limits.
Each episode unearths the treasure of human stories: wisdom, laughter, and moments of profound connection.
At its core, The Mapp is about the human story. It’s a place where problems shrink, purpose grows, and laughter and revelation often arrive hand in hand. For Michael, the podcast is more than a platform—it’s a mission. It’s an effort to create a space where wisdom is shared, ideas are tested, and hearts are healed. Whether through a profound insight or an unexpected laugh, Michael hopes listeners walk away from The Mapp with a sense that they, too, are part of a bigger story—one that is still being written and, in the words of another great storyteller, echoes through eternity.
The Mapp
Beyond the Veil: Mysticism in Modern Times
What does it mean to pursue the divine across cultures, languages, and spiritual traditions—and can we do so without losing the anchor of truth?
In this rich and reverent conversation, Michael sits down with Johnny Ganta—a man shaped by the soil of India, the skyline of Dubai, the individual freedoms of America, social focus of Cananda and the spiritual tension of East and West. Together, they unpack the mystery of how people seek God across the globe, and how our cultural “watering systems” influence what we expect from the eternal.
Johnny carries a worldview formed not in just theory but in tension—where Eastern mysticism meets Western rationalism, where soul hunger finds different expressions. Rather than judging this hunger by conventional metrics—prayer time, Bible study, church attendance—they look deeper: What is the soul actually seeking? And what are the vehicles people are using to find meaning, peace, healing?
The conversation orbits key contrasts: the Western obsession with certainty, logic, and control, versus the Eastern comfort with mystery, process, and presence. Johnny frames it in archetypes—masculine and feminine, doing and being, theory and encounter.
And yet, this isn’t theological drift. It’s spiritual discernment. Michael reminds us of the promise Jesus gave in Luke 11: that if a son asks his father for bread, he won’t give him a stone. “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”
This episode isn’t about abandoning orthodoxy. It’s about remembering that God is bigger than our formulas—and that if we ask Him for truth, He is faithful to give it. Even in unfamiliar spaces, His ability to keep us is stronger than the enemy’s power to deceive us.
Whether you're deeply rooted in the faith or still finding your way, this dialogue invites you to consider what people are really chasing—and how, even in unlikely places, they may be closer to the truth than they know.
Not all who wander are lost. And not all who seek are straying.
Thank you for joining The Mapp. If this resonates with you, don’t forget to subscribe and share it with others who might find it meaningful. Subscribe, leave review, and follow us on social media to stay updated and join our community of explorers. Together we navigate life’s pathways.
There's a kind of hunger that doesn't go away with knowledge. The more you learn, the more you sense what's missing. Not just in facts, but in understanding, moving from the theoretical to the experiential. Not just what you know, but in how you live. Rich Mullins once said I am not what I believe, I am what I believe is doing to me, and this conversation is for those who feel that ache.
Speaker 1:It's the first in a series of dialogues with my good friend Johnny Gunta, a friend whose life bridges the worlds of East and West. He is of Indian descent, he spent a large portion of his life in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. He had years of his life shaped in the West, when he studied in both Canada and America, and he carries the tension of two civilizations within his bones. He's walked through mysticism and modernity, through tradition and reason, and he's still searching for truth with both hands open. So what we're doing here isn't surface level. We're examining the deep architecture of thought between East and West, the soul and the spirit, reason and revelation. We talk about the sacred role of tobacco and spiritual practice, the tension between logic and mystery, the nature of the soul and what it means to suffer with purpose, and so we're entering into a dialogue, not a debate, it's not a performance, it's just an honest attempt to bring light to places that usually just get left in the shadow.
Speaker 1:You may find some of this strange, you may find some of it uncomfortably familiar, but if you're willing to sit with it, to with us wrestle with some ideas before rushing to any conclusions, then I believe there's something here that we all can unpack together. And so, wherever this finds you, welcome a breath, lean in and let's begin. Welcome to the map. Zen things no, have you. Do you know what I'm talking about? No, I don't know what you're. Zen things no, do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2:No, I don't know what you're talking about All right.
Speaker 1:So they're like these little nicotine pouches that people have. It's just like a pouch of nicotine, and so a lot of people who vape have transitioned over to doing these things.
Speaker 1:I've transitioned over to this Okay, is it gum? Yeah, yeah, nicotine, yeah, over to this. Okay, is it gum? Yeah, yeah, yeah they. They had like some studies come out and it's like smokers were like the least influenced by covid and they attribute it to actually nicotine. Was, uh, nicotine like has this thing where it like blocks some receptors and they found like some really like positive good effects from from nicotine itself. Obviously not the four other 400 other ingredients of cigarettes, like arsenic, malhyde stuff, but the nicotine.
Speaker 2:It does help you with the focus and they do consider it one of those um new, new tropics.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nootropic yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know another interesting thing about cigarettes or nicotine Tobacco actually tobacco the plant. So the Native Americans, they kind of introduced it to the world as we know it and that plant is a sacred plant for them. It's a listening plant and when you try and grow it in your garden, it will actually start moving and creeping closer to where people congregate because it likes to listen to conversation. So what they do is, as part of their rituals, they're going to burn the tobacco, and they do it in different parts of the world as well, where you burn something like tobacco and it carries the prayers to heaven and specifically, tobacco is a messenger from you to the Most High. And that's the history. Well, like, yeah, we've commercialized it and everything, and like, yeah, we can get addicted to a lot of good stuff.
Speaker 2:But I mean, this is more than um tobacco as an addictive plant you know, and I don't even think you need to inhale it, I think it just needs to be um incinerated yeah, it'll go through the bloodstream, even in your, in your like, under the smoke being in your mouth I think it needs to go on the bloodstream. You know, it's like like a siege as well, like it can just you just burn it and then you apply conscious intention as you, you know, as you pray so it's interesting that you started the conversation talking about like smoke going up to the most high.
Speaker 1:I remember, like peterson, talking about like sacrifices and then burning the sacrifice. Why do you burn the sacrifice? Because the smoke goes up.
Speaker 1:And so, under the same kind of premise of what you're talking about with the, with the tobacco, uh is it, is that uh yeah yeah which is what we were kind of like, what I wanted to kind of like hit on, uh, today, but I had you on podcast a long time ago. I feel like it's his own brand, which is what we were kind of like, what I wanted to kind of like hit on today, but I had you on podcast a long time ago. I feel like it's kind of unsanctimonious to just like dive in. So I do want to give like a little bit of intro.
Speaker 1:This is my good, dear friend, johnny Gunta. We met in Dubai and now he hails in the land of Bangalore, india, dubai, and now he hails in the land of Bangalore, india, and is one of the people who owns real estate in my heart and doesn't pay rent, even though time, space and matter are have us literally as far away from each other as we can get without. If we start going any direction, we'll probably start coming back towards each other geographicallyically, but, uh, I appreciate you hopping on and doing this man thanks for having me here, michael.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure to be here again.
Speaker 1:It's been many years like I'd like to get like your take on some things, because one of the things that we wanted to talk about was just like the difference between western and eastern mindset, a little bit around spirituality, but just like philosophy as well, and how we kind of view the world in the lens that we view the world through a big chunk of americans. This is changing, but there's a period of time where like 85 percent of americans didn't have passports and which is kind of wild for people who reside in other parts of the world to kind of conceptualize that they just you're born here, you die there, you won't even probably leave the state that you're in. Now this is changing. Ironically, last year, more people took vacations to Europe from America than ever before. So like we see like that trend changing. But there's a lot of propaganda pieces that people from the outside world will see, where, like, people say America is the greatest country in the world and this is being said by people who have never traveled to any other country. And so there comes this like sometimes narrow worldview and you're not forced to be around other people with like different perspectives.
Speaker 1:I think like living for a short time in the UAE and then living in Europe and seeing like, oh, people are doing things completely differently than I would do, that, but it's working. And like having to like kind of reconcile. Reconcile that. And for you it's kind of strange, because you you grew up outside of India big chunk of time. You spent time in Canada, you spent time in the UAE, you spent some time in the States and then, through a series of events, you end up back in India and now you're in a people group that maybe from the outside some are like oh yeah, you're an Indian dude, but you're a stranger in a strange land. That's somehow like home to you in a sense as well. So, yeah, maybe talk about what that's been like, because you kind of had both worlds in that sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm very much a bridge, I guess in that way, and I think that's my ministry, that's my soul path it's to be a bridge. I think exploring is a lot of what I do and I investigate. I investigate all kinds of things, I go deep into it, but then what I'm able to do is take what's useful, take what's foundational, take what's universal and then throw away the rest. Sometimes you don't need to throw anything away, but sometimes, yeah, there's spent a lot of time in exploring only to find that it wasn't the complete picture and it's been many years of just learning that way. But I think the bridge between cultures is one thing you know like who's got the right worldview right.
Speaker 2:I studied in the States a liberal arts education and in a liberal arts education take something like cultural studies, cultural heritage. I remember that was one of the classes. Cultural heritage for us in college was from the Greeks. The Greeks were the top dogs, right in our discussions. The Greeks were the ones that introduced the most rich philosophy, foundational worldview, foundational worldview. And I don't think we discuss much about the other side of the world. But yeah, that's how it is. You're right, in America 80% of people don't have passports, so you don't really travel around, and I think that's really sad because it's like. You know I can't remember who made this statement, but travel and life. There's something about travel being so. If life is like a book I think it's Augustine yeah, maybe, but basically, if life is like a book, then you know every chapter. When you travel or move, it's like you're living out a new chapter in this book. But if you just stay in one place, you don't really move and the story, actually the story, doesn't really evolve. You know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think something that I've been exploring myself, is coming back and trying to I wouldn't say assimilate, but just try to find my place in the States after being gone for about 11 years is that there's a very like straight, it's just like one line of religious thought or political thought or social thought of like this is how things are, um, and to your point, like if we're going to worship greek philosophers and like western mindsets that are very left brain leaning, um, you know, god, you know, has given us two sides of our brain, so the right side of your brain is like the intuition, it's, it's imagination, it's music, it's creativity, it's this side, the, the left being languages and and mathematics, and you know logic and I'd say, like to dumb down one side or or or favor one side, uh, would be crippling ourselves in some sense. And and when you look back through some meta-narratives throughout the Old Testament, you see that there's stories within stories, within stories that are happening. And if you just, from a Western perspective, to learn it is to memorize the information and be able to regurgitate that information, and that's not really learning lesson. So if I, if I uh burn my hand on the stove and then I later tell you like, yeah, I touched that stove on and I, and I burnt my hand and I can regurgitate that, but I didn't learn like not to put my hand on the hot stove and why that stove gets hot in the first place, and what does that stove even be used for? Outside of that, I'm not really learning.
Speaker 1:If I am learning, I'm learning in a very, very crippled way. And so the, the western brain thinks, um, maybe, like on a quantitative lens, and then the eastern, maybe, is looking more as a qualitative lens, and so quantitative in the sense of I have seven apples on the table and I'm going to count like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And then qualitative, on the Eastern mind says I have seven apples here and I can use these to create apple pie or I can create apple juice, or I can create applesauce from these things. So you're just like what can I do with these things? And so when you're telling a story from an Eastern perspective and then a Western mind is trying to interpret through the Western lens, it's just over the head. You're not seeing like the whole picture there for sure, and you popped out and popped back in. I don't know if all that came through.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, absolutely. I mean the gist of what you're saying. I mean it's spot on to the pattern. So there is this idea as above, so below, as within, so without, and this is a universal concept.
Speaker 2:You mentioned left brain and right brain, and there is a difference between these two hemispheres. Like, as you mentioned, right one is actually designed for novelty, curiosity, and that's the right hemisphere. The side you mentioned is connected to music and all of that. It's also the side that we don't really have. We don't really speak with the right hemisphere. That's the left hemisphere's job. The right hemisphere will speak in symbols, visually. That's another weird thing about it.
Speaker 2:But you can see the difference between this bicameral situation is that yin-yang, masculine-feminine. You know, that's your right brain, left brain, and with the world, when you expand, uh, as above, so below, and you can, you can find this pattern everywhere. There is a masculine and there is a feminine energy and uh, yeah, with the western world view, it's a, it's a, it's very much a masculine, um yang kind of energy, compared to the east, which is very feminine, very yin. Yeah, yeah, okay, with the mystery, you know, even when it comes to, like you know, uh, the bigger questions, the bigger philosophical questions, the religious questions. They're very much okay with the mystery here in india. We're very okay with mystery. It's not the case with the west. You have to have the known. You have to have that known world established and that's the preferred state. And it's great because you can actually build stuff when you get to that point of knowing and certainty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess. Looking at the trade-off of those two things, though, is like I know what I know, I know what I don't know, but I don't know what I don't know, and people feel very insecure to just admit like I don't know Me and my wife. There's actually like, I guess like there's a practice in Judaism when they discover something they don't know, they do a dance and celebrate, and the mindset is like there's something more for me to learn. It's a celebratory thing, but, like in the west, like you'll see, like clickbait stuff, where people will say something to somebody, then they don't know what to say, or they said the wrong thing or whatever, and people want to shame people for not knowing, and and so it's kind of like you cripple people's attempt to to learn, and like we live in like a time where I feel like we're coming out of it, but just like the whole cancel culture thing and and all that of like people were afraid to talk, and when you're afraid to talk, you're afraid to think out loud. When you're afraid to think out loud, I can't even test my ideas and, and you know, throw them out to you and you're like oh, mike, it's actually not like this, and we kind of like can work on them.
Speaker 1:But I feel like there's an example given once that always stuck with me, but it was about North Korea and Kim Jong-il. He asked the kids, like what's one plus one? And the kids said you have two, of course. And he said, no, what's one plus one? And the kids said, uh, you have two of course. And he said, no, one plus one is one. And they're like, explain. And then he said if I have one drop of water and one drop of water and I put them into a bucket, the water becomes one unit, one quantitatively. You didn't ask me like what I, what I uh, was adding together and this, this kind of sums up like it, you know, think whatever you want about korea, but this kind of sums up like an eastern take on, it's qualitative versus quantitative.
Speaker 1:It sums up what I was explaining with the seven apples there yeah, yeah, yeah so for you, like now, you know, jumping, jumping into a country that like has a like, I think, sanskrit. What is it like? Five thousand six thousand years old it's, estimate something like that's one of the oldest written forms of language you have. India has been, like, producing cotton, uh, for over 5,000 years. There's a lot of industries that have existed in the place that you're residing longer. America is only a couple hundred years old as a country, and then you're in a place where there's all these industries and all these things that people have invested themselves in. How do you the the layers of tradition and modernity and like a lot of the art that you do, like there's a lot of digital art you do, and the way that you build, you know, I see that you're kind of like building business stuff. Like how do you not necessarily reconcile those things but navigate those, those things?
Speaker 2:art, reconciling art with what?
Speaker 1:no just, but basically just tradition and and and the modernity, like, like if you're embracing like what's already existing there, because you said, like you kind of came to a place where you'll, yeah, great, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So for me, like so, I, I, you know, I my preferred approach in the world is that of like a mystic. Okay, and if I was born 200 years ago, I would probably, you know, be a monk or something Like. I really dig that kind of lifestyle, that ascetic lifestyle. Now, um, now would you remind me of the question?
Speaker 1:So I was just asking how do you reconcile? Uh, you know, navigating tradition and modernity within India, cause you're, you're coming in again. You're, you study in the States. You've you've been in Canada, you've been to UAE, and now you're coming in again. You study in the States. You've been in Canada, you've been to UAE, and now you're coming to Bangalore.
Speaker 2:So I think, look, here's one way of putting it the mystical approach to life is one of remembering. You know, through direct experience. You're trying to remember who you were, you're trying to remember truth.
Speaker 2:It's not about and I know I mentioned exploring at the beginning that's, it's exploration in a different way you know, we say you got to go inward, you got to go within, but what it really means is everything that is inverse to how we're thinking, when we're thinking just from ego perspective, so that mystical approach to life. You know, that means what I do as an artist. Uh, it's. It's just what I'm digging up from from the past you know, and I do it in a very literal way.
Speaker 2:as a collage artist, I work with public domain stuff and when I dig it up and I bring it back, it's a composite of many different works from different time periods. But what it does is it gives a universal message, one that's stood the test of time. So I'll cover themes like you know death and rebirth, and you know other mythological themes. You know, you can imagine, and we just talked about yin and yang and the masculine and the feminine. Those are universal concepts and and everything that I explore will touch upon that. So it is going back in time. There's it's, there's no issue with how do I reconcile things with the changing world. Foundational stuff is what I hold on to in my exploration, so does that make sense?
Speaker 1:yeah, so you and I think that kind of ties into what you said earlier. It's just like you look at for universal truths, like self-evident truths and things that have kind of stood the test of time, and if there's a narrative that's like 30 000 years older than written language or like 6 000 years old, whatever, like that, you know, irregardless of generation, people are able to integrate that into their, in their being. You can just pull symbols and pull the imagery to, to engage that right hemisphere of the, of the brain. You know, you, you talked about being like, you feel like you're, you're a mystic. I think it's probably like a connection point between us, because this is really like where I, you know, um, would, I don't really fit within, I would say like institutional circles of of faith. In some ways, I, I basically just have like bad. They say. I said bad theology basically because, but if I look through the, the corpus of, uh, the, the, the bible, uh, and I see that one of the ways that the creator of everything that exists wants to engage with people, interact with people, it's, it's through uh, visualization, it, it's outside of having like, a, a like there's a incarnation or a manifestation in the physical. Uh, a lot of times people are having visions or they're having dreams, and so when we talk about like your brain and how you're going to interpret information, one of the one of the ways that western people struggle a lot is they will want to sit down and have a really intellectually stimulating teaching, but they want to have something that they can. It's challenging enough to like it kind of stretches them, the neuroplasticity, but it's simple enough that they can walk away from that exchange and they can absorb it and they can regurgitate it back and like, look, I'm smarter for this.
Speaker 1:And then some of the people who are minded like that will very much move away from anything that has to do with music or emotion, and so they'll kind of disdain if people are playing music. And music really is a vehicle. Music like they'll hear certain songs and there'll be an element of nostalgia, but then you hear certain songs. It's like a vehicle to activate you in a sense, like it's activating a part of you, and so people are like, oh, this is sensationalism or emotional in a gravitate way, and so again, like having an openness to kind of marry those two, two sides, um, is it in the middle of your hemisphere is your brain, your penile gland, that's the third eye, like what we see in these, all like kind of symbols, but that that's you know. I would say that that's the projector screen in the mind. So if you'd say somebody close your, close your eyes and imagine a Coca-Cola bottle on a hot beach and you're sitting in your chair, they would immediately think about is it glass, is it plastic, how do I picture it? And they would immediately picture condensation running down that. So they're activating those hemispheres of the brain For people in the West.
Speaker 1:Why that's really hard is because our school system worships I shouldn't say worships, but heavily emphasizes the left brain function reading, writing, arithmetic, those things, and then art, music all these things are electives, they're they're non-essentials and they've actually done brain scans of kids and the left hemisphere of the brain will swell and the right hemisphere of the brain will will lag behind in growth. And they studied. Harvard tried to do a study of what it means to create geniuses or people who are very successful in business, and they completely abandoned the study. And the reason why they abandoned the study was because they connected genius, or people who are going to be successful in a sphere of life, to creativity, and creativity plummets the longer people are in Western education. It literally was like when everybody starts out in kindergarten like five, six years old, and it's like saying, by the time after they get to the 13th year, only 2% of them have like the threshold of whatever creativity they were talking about. So it's supposed to be like this big, like multi-decade study. They abandon it because they realize like we can't track this with such a small control group.
Speaker 1:But all that said, that's a long way of saying that when we talk about having dreams and having visions, if you had a dream, you came to me and said, michael, I had this dream and this and this and this happened. If I'm just like a left brain analytical person, I'm like good for you, dude. What did you? Did you eat pizza before you went to bed? Like what, exactly? What do you want me to do with that pizza before you went to bed? Like what, what exactly? What do you want me to do with that? But people throughout the, the corpus of, of, when you talk about mystics, they actually will make decisions out of what they're encountering in that state, and the same thing with, like, uh, and most people.
Speaker 1:If let me reframe, you look at, like albert einstein or isaac newton, the theories that they had came to them in a flash and they'll use different language around. But it was actually spontaneous thought, which is a vision of sorts. Uh, einstein's walking on the train platform, he turns around to look at the clock and he looks back and then that's when it clicks on his head. When he turned to see what time it was he the time had changed by the time. It took him to look back Isaac Newton to see what time it was he the time had changed by time. It took him to look back isaac newton, the theory of gravity, all that.
Speaker 1:So there is a space for, in the pragmaticism of western life, to solve problems and innovate and create. The problem with that is is we're trying to commoditize mysticism and we're trying to make it something, uh, that it's perverted in a sense because it's it's about the inner man and it's about transmutation and transcendence of the of the inner man. Those other things are peripheral. We can use it for that, um, but anyways, that that's the only interest I've seen some people have and it's like, oh, I can, I can meditate and then figure out how to save my business.
Speaker 2:1.2 million dollars so I mean it would help if you were in that situation, right, um, because I I think, um, as an artist, I can acknowledge one thing we don't really discover. I mean, we don't invent anything, that's for sure, um, and I don't even think we discover, like, when it comes to art. Some of it might be a discovery, but I think most of it. Once you have your practice tip top, you begin to transmit, channel. I think that's more of what it is. So when people say I'm inspired, it's essentially we're talking about the muse showing up. And so what is that muse? I think this actually leads us into a deeper topic which I think people in the West should think about more. Like it's not just you operating here. And even when you say, inner man, that I love Carl Jung because he's like a bridge, you know, from the West to the East and he, you know even, that's why Peterson also has an appeal for a lot of people out there. It's because he's bringing the world of Jung to the front and he's saying look, here's a framework for understanding and comprehending, and I think that's why we're even able to have this conversation right now.
Speaker 2:But channeling, yeah, jung talked about active imagination, so that's a whole thing, the active imagination. His book, the Red Book, came from this process, which he calls active imagination, which is essentially what prophets would do. You know, people like Ezekiel, jeremiah dudes like that in the Bible. You've got Jung doing this, and he's an artist as well. So he's illustrated these visions and he expands on the subconscious and the collective unconscious and all of these things.
Speaker 2:But it's both in and out. I think both are happening simultaneously. The reason why I mentioned the out is because these ideas don't just come from the, they don't just come from us, like we, yeah, yeah, we have to channel, we have to tune in and channel. That tuning in part is difficult for most people because they get stuck in really crummy ways of thinking, you know, and it really is not helpful. So if you want to be inspired in all of that, you've got to be able to find your zen, your peace in that storm, because the muse, well, she can't. It's difficult for her to come down here. This density, this vibration, it's very difficult and it's difficult living on this in this material plane. You know, blankly put, it's difficult when we are not conscious of greater things around us.
Speaker 2:So there's a spectrum that we can visibly see in the electromagnetic spectrum. But there's a whole lot more outside of that. And the same goes for our hearing. There's a whole lot more outside of what we can hear. Our pets, you know. They could be seeing angels and we don't even know. They could be seeing ET, and we don't even know. You know, we're really ignorant of most things. I mean, that's the truth.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, people like Einstein, people like Newton Newton was an alchemist, right, he was into the woo-woo essentially he was drinking mercury subject, right in the States, and the arts and things like that. But without the arts, you know, you don't have that. The imagination needs to exercise itself somehow. Like theater is important. I studied theater, theater class for two years at Hope Hope College, and it's again a framework for thinking, for storytelling, for your own life, because life is a stage, the world is a stage. We're all just players, as Shakespeare says. You know. But you got to understand the mechanics of play on a stage, what it means to wear the persona, the mask. You know and understand, as above so below the so, that the nature of god, the image of god, god's allowed to wear masks too, and god certainly does. You see, we accept that in this part of the world. It's hard to accept in the west. They want one thing, you know, um, and, and the west really imported, uh, a more updated, uh, modern form of world religion, which was this trend towards monotheism, from polytheism. But yeah, when you go back in time, though, you understand that God is many things, that we are, we, you know, we really we come.
Speaker 2:When you think about God, you have to think about the soul. You have to think about why we think about God. It's because of soul, it's the knowledge of the eternal that we come from. The eternal Eternal means you were there from the beginning and you will be there in the end and you will not be destroyed, right, because you are eternal. So the great illusion, the maya, is that you know death is a real thing. There's something to be afraid of. The truth is that there's nothing to be afraid of. Yeah, but then, in the West at least, with Christianity, you've got this. You know, god's a very scary guy, you know, and he's going to get. He's a jealous God and he's going to get very upset with you, and I mean he's basically going to act like a five-year-old and he might you know, but worse, you know he might do something very dangerous.
Speaker 2:He might put you in an eternal fire. And that's a horrifying thought, right, and yet we? A horrifying thought, right, and yet we've adopted it, we've okayed it. Yeah, and we've okayed it. When we wonder why there are problems, why we don't feel correct inside, it's because these things do not align with the soul. They do not. We know better. But look, you can't question mom and dad. You can't question the minister, right? You can't question those you have told, you have publicly put trust in.
Speaker 2:You know it's difficult for people at least you know that's what I've discovered Like, I mean, I have spent time in both sides of the camp, but it's difficult for people to switch. It's difficult for people to forget, switch, just even just step outside of all of it and just see the bigger pattern behind everything, because it really is just going to repeat itself in this side of the, the world. We call it karma. It's something that would repeat, it's a pattern that keeps repeating until you stop, you sit with it, integrate, as Jung says, and that really means coming to peace with it. So what does that mean in simple terms For the soul? The soul is here to learn. The soul is here to grow. The soul came here with purpose. Right, we agreed to that before coming. You're tracking with me yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, from the eternal perspective. When we get here, we have amnesia because there's no need to remember all of the past, the past lives and all of that. But we continue the journey here In this life. There is a contract to fulfill In this life, you know, there are things to learn from our parents. There are things to learn from our friends. There's things to learn from you know, we choose the circumstances of our birth as well and who we are born to.
Speaker 2:You know, that's a perspective that most people don't want to carry, because forget thinking about death and what happens after. People don't want to think about pre-birth and what happened before, you know. So that's why people just, they're just lost, right, they don't know, like, where home is, and yet we cry for home all the time. Right, when somebody dies, we'll say they've gone home, brother, they've gone home means what Means. You came from there, you know what home feels like, right, but you don't want to talk about it, you don't want a memento mori, you know, and that's the problem, like, because if you just take that, you know, if you, if you just cross over to the other side, say you die and cross over to the other side, right, like, right now, michael, you will find that there was nothing to be afraid of, because you don't die, yeah, and you're not going to burn up either.
Speaker 2:Are you going to be judged? Sure, why not, you know, because on the other side, there is no contrast, right? You can remember all things, you can see all things, and not just from your perspective, from everyone's perspective. So you get to review your life. You know, the Christians talk about a book of life. This side of the world, we talk about Akashic records and other things, but there's a record of everything. Essentially, that has happened, that will happen, but, yeah, you get a review and then, for your next round, you get to improve, you get to continue the learning, whatever it is that you want to do, or you get to rest. It's up to you, right? But we're down here living in the ultimate simulation.
Speaker 2:It is literally the matrix. We're here being our life energy is being sucked with this like nine to five kind of slavery. I don't want to use these words because a lot of people are doing that. We all do. We're a part of the system, right, but it is what it is. The soul didn't come down here to just do. Just do that. Just please, mom and dad, just you know, get married and have the 2.5 kids. Just do that nine to five like a good, good boy.
Speaker 2:It's not why we came here. Yeah, I mean, part of the learning is to learn how to do that, to learn how to be a good member of society, learn how to cooperate, you know, collaborate, all of that good stuff. But we're also meant to learn how to stand on our own feet, how to discover the light within. Okay, because there is really no other light that you can count on in this world, especially today's world. Now, that might scare some people, because when I say find your light, they'll be like, yeah, but what about God's light? If you find that light, you'll find that it is God's light. They're scared, they don't trust themselves. The is God's light. They're scared, they don't trust themselves. The way God trusts us. God trusts his creation, her creation. It doesn't matter how we place God, it doesn't matter how we define God, but one thing's for sure we come from unconditional love and we get to experience. On this side of the bridge, we get to experience what it means to be separated, what it means to be lost, okay what it means to not have right. On the other side, you got it all. You have to come here to experience all of this and this is the only way the soul will grow experientially. And it's a beautiful thing when you maintain that bigger perspective. It gives you a lot of peace. And, look, you don't have to believe in past lives and reincarnation and all of that, because that's expanding, maybe too far. You can just see this as this one life is what you got. In fact, the sage would say you must just look at the one day as one life and that's all you have Every day as that, just one life, sun up to sun down, and then you do your best with that day. But what does that mean? Doing your best From the soul perspective? It means, well, everything that you experience. That is painful, that is friction, right, that is a pain in your butt. You stop and you say, okay, what am I here to learn? Okay, because that friction, that pain was designed. It was pre-designed as part of the path for you to learn. Now we get every day we get the pattern repeating Okay, the same, problems with our spouse, the same, you know, issues with work, you know all of these things will keep repeating and the pain repeats until we deal with it. These things will keep repeating and the pain repeats until we deal with it. Dealing with it is yeah, what am I here to learn?
Speaker 2:So the Jews, I mean the Kabbalists, they call this tikkun, which is soul correction, right, that the soul, before it came here, had already placed these sort of these challenges to remind you that you're here to grow and shape in a certain way, you know. So, the soul, essentially. So, if we were to talk about the soul, the soul is a vessel, okay, but it's not just a vessel in a static sense. You have to think about it like a seed, okay. So keep these two metaphors in mind, right, a vessel is there to receive. You get to receive from the light. Okay, you get to, but a vessel can only receive as much as it has a capacity for. Okay. Now think about the seed. The seed is your vessel. The seed is the soul. Okay, it is at least the part of your soul that you can comprehend right now. Okay, because the soul is really, really big. Our vessel can't even contain the entirety of our soul, right? So our job here is to expand the vessel, right, but then also allow for more soul to come in. Yeah, and that's really what we're meant to do on the everyday, sunup to sundown. It's that, and any situation can allow us to move in that higher direction.
Speaker 2:So you'll be like why is my boss being such a, you know, a mean person to me today? Well, that's okay, it doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. If you want, if you want that whole thing to stop because it keeps coming up again and again, there is a way. Well, yeah, most people, unfortunately, and unfortunately, yeah, they don't want the simplicity of it, right? Because I just talked about Kabbalah and that's from the. You know that was Abraham's religion, that was Adam's religion. You know it's like that was Yeshua's. I wouldn't say religion, because it's not really religion, right, it's a system, mechanics of the universe. But who was privy to that information? Not everybody. The common man does not get that information. Today we have access to this information and you can empower yourself with that knowledge. But even then, it's really difficult to read some of these books.
Speaker 1:Yeah I think, like some of the, there's like an overlap on some ideas and then there's like a reframing of ideas. So if you talk about karma and like that whole thing, I think from biblical perspective you're just going to talk about generational curses, that there's going to be a pattern that's just going to keep happening over and over and over.
Speaker 2:That's cool they do talk about. I think that's a good.
Speaker 1:I didn't think of that and then, when you talk about reincarnation and the afterlife, there's ideas that have been adopted.
Speaker 1:Basically, an idea just keeps condensing down on itself, and then we arrive at this conclusion, as if it's always been like this, and so I had this conversation before about you mentioned, like the jews, so the jews had this kind of ambiguous relationship with the afterlife and they would talk about there's shiel, which is the place where, like dead, it's a collective kind of thinking, not an individual thinking, but just like, okay, dead people are kind of there. And then there's this idea that emerged of gehenna, which is like a geographical location outside of Israel, but they kind of came up with this concept of basically what the Catholics would call purgatory. So basically, normally it's about 12 months. If you're a real bad person, sometimes it'd be extended out, but it's basically kind of a cleansing of the soul, like post-mortem, god is going to have to deal with you before you move on with the collective there. And so how did those ideas carry over? Were those ideas carried over and the Catholics adopted this idea of purgatory, which is Gehenna, and they adopted this idea of heaven and hell?
Speaker 2:No, no one needs to adopt. I think that's one way of looking at it, but it's like overcomplicating it.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:It's like they start all over the world, like even right now, people's view of the other side, each person's experience, is going to be different. So I'm talking about people that have actually crossed over, like near-death experiencers. So there's a lot of those guys, you know. So there's a lot of those guys. Now, what they see and what they experience on the other side whether it's Jesus Christ or an archon or a bodhisattva, or their family members or their ancestors depends on the framework that they accepted when they were alive.
Speaker 1:That's the deal. Yeah, if I was, if I was going to be like a devil's advocate, uh, here, like argue the point, I'd say that the brain was flooded with dmt good from the traumatic brain or from where you're getting there to death and you're having this experience. My only point there was that I was just trying to like kind of walk through like where these ideas emerged, because you threw out a lot of things there, and so the idea you referenced eternal punishment, and then you, and then there's an idea of basically destruction and there's another idea of universal atonement, and so these three ideas were kind of played with in the early church were kind of played with in the early church. Augustine is the one who popularized eternal punishment that if you don't make the right decision in this life, then post-mortem you're going to go to a place that's going to be real unpleasant for you, forever and there's just no recourse there. In Asia Minor they had this idea that for some people you were just so bad that your, your eternal essence was snuffed out, that your spirit, soul is just your consciousness ceases to exist, which that's the definition of death, is ceased to exist, which that doesn't. That's not real because, to your point. We are eternal beings and because we're coming from the source and if I come from the source then I'm going to share some of the qualities, or all the qualities of the source, and so the idea of universal atonement was that which this is more sword to the side that I lean into is that Jesus said when I be lifted up, I'm going to draw all men to me.
Speaker 1:When we read that, it was the land that was crucified before the foundations of the world, what does that mean? That means outside of time, space and matter, something has happened, and then we can point to in time, space and matter something has happened, and we can point to in time, space and matter when that thing happened. And so there's a place where somebody is God, becomes a human, is crucified and resurrected from the dead. That happened in time, space and matter, but that happened outside of time, space and matter. And so we're happening inside of time, space and matter, but we've happened outside of time, space and matter. That's how he's able to say that I have drawn all men to me and that's why Paul says I've been co-crucified. The life I now live, I no longer exist. It's Christ who lives in me, because I've become unified with this person, we become Siamese twins or more than that, and so universal atonement leans on the idea that, whether you want it or not, like it or not, believe it or not, you've been unified with the creator of everything that exists.
Speaker 1:But from CS Lewis' perspective was that there's a book that he wrote called the Great Divorce, and in the Great Divorce it was an allegory where people could be in hell as a geographical place and a state of being, where you have the choice to be there. Yes, unconditional love is pointed towards you. But there's a bus that came every day and went into hell and it went up to heaven every single day and there was nothing prohibited you of going farther into into heaven, uh, to be with god. But people would find, like he had all these avatars, the character archetypes, that they would find the reason to get back on the bus and go back down. And he makes a very uh solid point of if I am the guy having this human experience and I have wrong belief systems about what this human experience is he's like, if I don't understand that I live forever. If I'm going to choose to be bitter towards you, johnny, you do something wrong to me and I don't forgive you and I want to have vengeance on you and I start to become bitter and jealous or envious or whatever.
Speaker 1:If I only live from a Western standpoint, if I only live for like 50, 60, 70 years, we know, we can quantify that I can develop arthritis in my bones. I can literally have heart problems. There's actually a Japanese, the Japanese figure this out. They call it broken heart syndrome and literally if people have a lot of stress or whatever, like there's a kind of heart condition. I know this because my mom went through this. That's called broken heart syndrome. So we know that the things that weigh on the soul and the spirit can have a physical impact on the body. But if I'm only living for 70 years, my life doesn't have that much meaning or purpose and it doesn't really matter if I be bitter for 70 years. I feel this physical.
Speaker 1:Now, if I live for a million years or let's say I live forever, but like in a million years imagine quantitatively that compounding over a million years of bitterness, a million years of vengeance, a million years, and that that literally becomes hell. That's what Lewis pointed to. Is that that that'll become your state of being a million years and that literally becomes hell. That's what Lewis pointed to is that that'll become your state of being, but your geographical location. And in that book, the Great Divorce, people who chose to be there. They didn't like other people, and so you could see houses way farther, farther, farther out, and that's where Hitler was, because they just so much hated people.
Speaker 1:And God in the creation story had a series of benedictions. He created the earth and the heavens it's good. He separated the light and the dark it's good. Animals it's good, good, good, good. And the last thing that he said after the benedictions that he cursed is it's not good for man to be alone. It's not good for man to be alone. We're actually meant to be within relationship with each other. We're supposed to have common union, communion with each other and with God. And that was the whole point of universal atonement is to reconcile, which means to break separation, restore relationship between humanity and itself and the creator of everything that exists. That was the point there. And to break separations means you have to stop dispute. And to stop dispute means you have to engage with these things we're talking about. And so, from Lewis's perspective, hell is God's final granting of man's wish to be left alone, not God is in a courtroom as the gatekeeper per se.
Speaker 1:Now, I know that some people that that'll be counterculture, but I would just say this is that when if I'm looking from this from a Christian perspective, when Jesus comes onto the scene, it's a minority viewpoint. Everything he's saying, everything he's teaching, christians say, oh, this is the truth. It was a minority viewpoint at the time. It was viewed as a cult, it was anti-Judaism at the time, and then it gained traction and built and built, and built. And so there's an assumption that Augustine's perspective because it was a majority viewpoint of eternal punishment is what should be adopted readily, because the masses decided to agree with it. And my perspective is that nobody really knows post-mortem what we're dealing with there. But I think that there is some overlap on ideas.
Speaker 1:I think probably where the rub happens, where the buck stops, the hinge point of everything is when I had this conversation is when we start talking about overlap of ideas. It's like was there actually a person named Jesus who actually lived on this earth, who actually was the incarnation of God, who actually died on a cross, who actually resurrected the dead literally, not figuratively? That actually happened. And if that actually happened, then we have like two different kind of uh perspectives to hold. One is that well, if that actually happened, then I do have some kind of moral responsibility to enforce that. If it never happened, or I don't know if it happened, I can take that standpoint, but I have somewhat of a moral responsibility?
Speaker 2:definitely. I don't know why people keep debating on whether or not Yeshua existed.
Speaker 1:Well, not the existence but the resurrection is probably the point.
Speaker 2:Everything. I mean, why do people see it as so impossible? I mean, this goes back to what we were talking about People they have no concept of anything beyond just the material experience, know they don't even give it a chance and, like jesus, you know there's, there's okay sorry, I threw a bunch of stuff at you quite a bit, but I think I want to just touch upon.
Speaker 2:You mentioned shale, right, you mentioned the, the different groups and the debates on the afterlife, even among the Jews. And at the time of Jesus you had three of these groups the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and those two debated amongst themselves. And then you had these outliers, the Essenes, where John the Baptist comes from, jesus comes from there, yeshua comes from there. And the Essenes if you look at their framework, they're the ones that introduced baptism for starters. They never believed in ritual sacrifice. Okay, so they were always living on the fringes because they did not believe in animal sacrifice. Right, and a lot of their texts you can find that you know, some of these texts are written a couple hundred years before Jesus enters the scene.
Speaker 2:So Jesus is not all that unique in terms of saying something so radical. You know, and out there, you know, he was still a very respected man who spoke in wisdom and stature and had favor with God and men. You know, you remember that, right, he had the respect with those in the Sanhedrin, it's just that. Yeah, he was an Essene. And you know those boys, you know they just they were right about some stuff, but no one wanted to. Like ever, you didn't want to remove sacrifices from the thing because it was a big, there was a lot of money there.
Speaker 2:Right, jesus is using that whip in the temple because, yeah, because, like dude, they had made a whole racket out of it and but this wasn't like it was a new thing. They were the Essenes were. They saw that as a problem right from the get you know. So this is a really old story with those people. But I think the people that choose to follow like Abraham's religion, like and call it Christianity, they argue over this. The things that I don't know you're not even meant to argue over, like it's just.
Speaker 1:What was the? You mentioned this word before, but that was the one part that I left out. There was Sheol, there was this Gehenna and then the world that is to come, takthulum or something like this. I'm butchering the word, but it's the world that is to come and that's what you're entering into. There's like these three kind of pools or buckets. Uh, there, and I find it quite interesting, like one thing I do find interesting when we talk about reincarnation and this idea of and you said we're living in simulation is uh, uh, they said like okay, you're going to be in the afterlife, you're going to be given a new mind, a new body, and I always think about like role-playing video games, because when I start a role-playing video game, I just create this avatar and I can make it look how I want or whatever, and I just get dropped into this digital world and I'm just kind of roaming around this world by consciousness, controlling this, this thing, but I can plop into other worlds and so there's like layers of dimensions that you can just kind of move through.
Speaker 1:So we see these buckets that they're talking about, like shield, gana, knock, I can't remember the word, um and so that idea of like being plopped in a different bucket, of an experience like of, okay, now I'm a dog this time, now I'm this stuff, this whatever. Um, it doesn't, it doesn't, outright, I don't know. I I just find it interesting, like post-mortem we get plopped into another, uh, meat bag, or if, if, like or or maybe a silicon-based life form or something, I don't know.
Speaker 2:But see, you probably pick your meat bag and, yeah, it might be a dog and in one life, because you're gonna learn a lot from being a dog you learn a lot from being a female dog in the same way, there's a lot you've learned from.
Speaker 2:You know a male human and a female human. There's a lot that we're going to learn from you know, a caucasian human? Or, uh, you know a person of, uh, some other asian? Right, you know, it's all the same thing. At the end of the day, the meat bag, as you rightly put it, is just a vessel for the soul and like that's like.
Speaker 2:I keep going back to that because that is the only perspective worth carrying and like the debates about is there a heaven, is there a hell? Well, yeah, I mean yeah, like everything. You manifest everything right, right, like, including the hell, okay, and it is an eternal place, because when you're there, when have you, if you've been to hell, right, like, and you can talk to some people who've dealt with addiction, you've dealt with, um, mental health issues and you know other things like that, uh, there's some hellish, hellish experiences that you can have and it definitely feels like an eternity, but when you get out of it, it's likeish, hellish experiences that you can have and it definitely feels like an eternity, but when you get out of it, it's like, wow, it feels like a miracle, doesn't it? And it feels like some hand stretched down and pulled you out of that. Sometimes that's the only way you can get out of that. And so that again that comes as that idea, that Christian idea of you know the Redeemer and the Savior. But it's not just a Christian idea.
Speaker 2:I mentioned bodhisattva earlier. That's the Buddhist term for a savior, an ascended master who's already crossed over, doesn't need to come back. But they come back to do exactly what Yeshua did To them. It's not like it's a big deal, it's like they still do it today. You, you've got um the dalai lama. In fact I'm wearing this thing is from the dalai lama. Uh, got it. A friend of mine got it from rishi kesh, but that tibetan book of the dead, when talking about the journey of um the soul, right, well, for them, they will. They know the time and the place when an Ascended Master is going to sort of reincarnate and they've got questions and cues and props which this child will select, and they will know that that you know the Ascended Master has reincarnated into the body of that child. That's how they do it. It's very, very cool. Ascended Master has reincarnated into the body of that child. That's how they do it. It's very cool how they do it, but it's very normal. Again, how much of the container, the perspective do you want to hold right?
Speaker 1:Is it in Tibet where they do the sky funerals?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they do that. They do that. The Zoroastrians, I know, do that. Right, the Parsis, they do that. The sky funeral.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, a vulture, they're going to eat your flesh. Yeah, they just leave you up there to be consumed, and back into the circle of life.
Speaker 2:You hear elton john singing in the background. Yeah, would you prefer to be buried or um cremated or?
Speaker 1:I think cremated yeah it's like I think it's just very like pragmatic. Uh of like I I think like a funeral industry within the States is a is a racket. I think it's it's crazy that you pay, you know, 12, 15,000 plus dollars to like lay somebody to to rest in your family and they, they kind of, they'll kind of leverage your grief of like, oh, michael, johnny was your friend and you want to do right by Johnny, don't you? And get him this platinum-coated casket here and the gravestone. I mean, he really likes Star Wars, michael. It's just a couple hundred dollars more, but we want to put that Millennium Falcon on the back of that gravestone to honor Johnny, don't we? I'm not saying they're all like that, I'm just saying I just find it's pretty straightforward if you're cremated and then it's done. It's fine, like it's pretty straightforward if you're if you're cremated and then it's done. But, um, there's a lot of like alternative methods have came, like there's there's one scam that came out with those people what do you think happens when you die?
Speaker 2:because you said that you think it's just dmt, that's flooding the brain I didn't say that.
Speaker 1:I said I was playing. I was playing devil's advocate of what, like somebody, I kind of of want to.
Speaker 2:Well, I kind of want to. You can't just like. I want to play devil's advocate and not let me respond. Okay, okay, you know. So the DMT thing, huh, that's fair. Okay, dmt is going to give you a trip? Okay, but this is not the same kind of a trip. Give you a trip, okay, but this is not the same kind of a trip.
Speaker 2:These near-death experience stories are not they're not spoken of in the same way as a trip. There's more lucidity and clarity in these experiences and those who've experienced it will often say it was more real than real life. It wasn't a trip. In fact, they were outside of their body, many of them, and they're able to see. This is when they're many of them and they're able to see. This is when they're completely unconscious, brain dead. They're able to see who's operating on them. They're able to hear conversations and they're able to recall, after they've come back, who was doing, what, saying what. Right, that's weird, right, um and um.
Speaker 2:There's more like so the life reviews and things like that. They get insight into parts of their life that, uh, you know, they, they, they just do completely blind to right. They're getting instruction about their future, you know, and the coming back changed people. These are not people that uh are quite the same. They all have have very, very, very similar testimonies.
Speaker 2:They're basically, yeah, there is another side. There is a sort of a judgment, but they don't use that word. It's like review, okay, because you get to see everything that you've done, but not just from your perspective, from the perspective of the other person, someone that you've. So if you've done something good for someone and you didn't even know how big of a deal that was, you get to experience what that was like. You know how your words change someone else's life day, whatever. But if you hurt someone, you get to see what that does as well. So then it makes sense that you know you'd want to kind of come back and get a redo. But yeah, most people that come back and get a redo, um, but yeah, most people that come back, they don't even want to come back because they're so damn good on the other side. You know it's like I've heard conflicting.
Speaker 2:I mean they say like people have similar experiences, like I'd say like I don't know there are people that have had hellish experiences, but it's a very, very small percentage, maybe around five percent, okay, but I can talk more about that if you're curious about that, because we did discuss hell.
Speaker 2:So, as an experience. On the other side, it does exist how people get out of that, because they are able to come back. They came back to tell the story. So how they got out of hell is there's a common thread to that and it's that they don't do it on their own. They don't walk out of it on their own. They don't have a key in their pocket to open the door. It's not like that. They essentially surrender and then something comes to get them, whether it's Jesus Christ or Mother Mary or whatever it is. It is another figure that is pulling them out of that.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, but many people don't experience that. So, like a lot of atheists that have that experience, they don't go through a hell necessarily because they just don't even have that framework. They have not accepted and they might not see like saints or angelic beings. They'll see like it could be other versions of themselves. It could be ancestors, you know it'll be whatever they're cool with. So that's another thing, because what it teaches us is that the imagination is very important. You know the, the stories you and then, and the myth that you allow to make up your worldview and framework is super important. It affects how we operate in the world and the day-to-day, and it entirely affects what happens on the other side, at least how we perceive things on the other side.
Speaker 1:Yeah Carl Jung was kind of pointing to, I'm going to paraphrase into like, if you, I'm gonna paraphrase. But basically, if you came up with the concept of mickey mouse and I came up with the concept of bugs bunny, that like bugs bunny and mickey mouse actually exists somewhere in another dimension, like as actual entities like me, and you thought them up and they're actually in that other dimension, like interfacing brought them up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and there's, there's a collective of consciousness, basically, where ideas just kind of get dumped into. And one thing that you mentioned earlier was and I'm not nuanced on this, I just heard it in passing in a podcast, but they talked about that in one part of the world there will be a group of monkeys and they will learn how to do something, or they will be doing something, and then on the entire other side of the world they've never interacted with each other, but they will start exhibiting like a certain like kind of behavior, and it's happened with rats and it's happened with other kinds of animals I don't remember the word for it, but it's a phenomenon within science that they're trying now to understand. Um, unlike how that's happening, but it would, for me, kind of point to a collective consciousness that, like, even though they're not interacting or like overlapping in a geographical space, they're still able to pull from that. And and when we talk about creativity and art, I would say, like, most of the time and I don't want to diminish anything that people have done but say, and even in innovation, most of the time what's happening is you're synthesizing, you're synthesizing a, a what has already been, uh, versus like you're actually reaching out into the ethos, into something that never has existed, and pulling it in.
Speaker 1:I think it can happen very rarely. Most people are not that kind of creative. Most people are synthesizers, where they can like take things and like take a collective of things and then change it into something. And same thing with innovation is it's just like stacking ideas on, like the previous idea. You're not really creating. You're creating something new, but it's like you're innovating on the ideas of of other people, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:But I think anyways, I have can I add to that perspective run for it? I have to have like the collective or three minutes. Yeah, it's a massive idea. So you've got monkeys on two sides of the world that are growing in the same way, right. Well, I want to add this that even for human beings it would happen in the same way even if we were not globalized, and that's how it kind of happened throughout history they found that, though that that's.
Speaker 2:That was the connection point they were making yeah, and so I going to just leave you with this. The world of astrology, right, and how we evolve over eons and shape shift over eons. There's a time and a season for everything to happen. The human story kind of follows the astrological narrative. The journey of the stars is the journey of us and it continues. And, yeah, I think there is a time for change. When it does happen, when the monkey kind of shifts, I think it happens as a collective, unconscious upgrade, and then there's also external environmental factors that will influence the change.
Speaker 1:As well, I'll try to find it for the next podcast that we do. I'll find out what it actually is and I'll send it to you so we can kind of unpack it, because it was. I wasn't explaining it great, but it was like nuanced of like they were exhibiting something. That's just. They've never interacted. It's something like random there. When you talk about astrology just to clarify for people who listening you're you're talking about the actual study of like the stars. You're not talking about horoscopes, you're talking about like I'm talking about horoscopes as well well, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, that that's conversation of the time. I think horoscopes, but I think astrology is like real, because they they use the star to find jesus.
Speaker 2:Horrible. I mean, look, they're called transits and then you can actually figure out your own future. You don't have to look at it from some fortune cookie kind of perspective. It's quite a vast subject. If you do give it a chance, you will find that, especially if you're kind of on the mystical side of things, I mean mean, do remember that you know, jesus was discovered by the a star, yeah, but that's what I was saying, that that's.
Speaker 1:That's a study of like astrology joseph knew his astrology as well.
Speaker 2:He was the right hand of the pharaoh, you know. So I mean, and the, the kabbalah astrology, the, the tropical zodiac contemporary, uh, astrology today, uh, a lot of it is borrowed from kabbalah. Okay, and that's the. The judeo-christian history includes that, so I wouldn't just throw the baby out with the bath water here yeah, what I'm talking about is like in the newspaper. They like give out like your son's sign, so there's actually a whole lot more than just the sun that influences you, and they did it.
Speaker 2:They did why I say it's like they did it.
Speaker 1:They did a controlled study and they like gave like uh, people all the same same horoscope and like 85 percent of people said, oh yeah, that that's me, but they, they're all like completely different. Um, there, but, dude, I have a, I have a meeting that I have to to hop for, but, uh, appreciate you jumping on and unpack what. We have a lot of stuff to unpack, moving forward, uh and this in a part two and part three yeah, yeah, I love you, dude. Thanks for making the time appreciate.
Speaker 2:Appreciate you. This was fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2:All right, take care.
Speaker 1:Bye, bye-bye. If something in this conversation stirred you good, that discomfort, that curiosity, that moment of stillness you felt, where maybe you were challenged, maybe you're offended, maybe you're upset, maybe you were enlightened. That's where transformation begins. One of my deep beliefs is I'm not really interested in creating platforms of revelation or dialogue to tell people what to think, but more so to unpack ideas and that people discover why they should be thinking in the first place and different pathways on how to think, different access points. And so the goal here isn't to settle things and who's right, and it's opening the door to deeper thought, to harder questions, to more honest living and maybe, in that process, to recover a sense of the sacred in a world that's been forgotten to us.
Speaker 1:If that meant something to you, share it, not because you need more noise in the world by any means, but because we need more voices willing to slow down to explore things in depth. We're going to be unpacking this conversation over several hours, moving forward, send it to someone who's asking maybe similar questions and, if you have not subscribe to the podcast, and throw a review down, because that is training the algorithm on who to put the podcast in front of. And so these things help more than you know. So this is only the beginning. We've got more to explore and you're invited to come with us. So until next time, keep seeking, keep questioning.
