[00:00:01] Luke: Tell me about the very first time that you experienced 5-MeO-DMT.

[00:00:06] Cru: Wow. You're coming right out with it.

[00:00:09] Luke: Let's just go right there.

[00:00:11] Cru: Right there.

[00:00:11] Luke: Right out of the gate.

[00:00:12] Cru: Yes. That was almost exactly two years ago. Actually, we all experience 5-MeO-DMT all the time. We produce 5-MeO-DMT in our bodies. It's our connection to source that is always there. So it's just that we're not so aware of it because it's in such minimal quantities in our body that we're not having that full experience as we have it when we inhale it coming from the toad. But yes, the first time in that amount was almost two years ago.

[00:00:54] Luke: And how did that come to pass? What were the events that led up to that experience?

[00:00:59] Cru: So actually it was Philip doing it before me. He heard from you about Bufo.

[00:01:07] Luke: Great. I'm glad it went well.

[00:01:11] Cru: So then he had this thing that he's been working with for the entirety of our marriage. And we have very good access to a lot of really amazing people, and he still couldn't get it to get around the curve.

[00:01:33] So then he heard about Bufo. He did a lot of research. I was not such a big medicine person. I work with energies and with changing things, healing things my whole life without medicine. And so I was a bit like, hmm, because I never really had anything to do with it. It was a little bit, all right then. Sounds extreme, but why not?

[00:02:02] And then he did do that. And I thought, yeah, let's just wait and see how the changes last. Because I'm doing these things since 50 years now. Even as a child, I have already worked in this field, and I know that after a certain amount of energy work, you have this effect of things change and then everyday life comes and then it falls back to where you came from.

[00:02:33] Because if you don't do the work that needs to be done, you will actually never create lasting change. So I was very skeptical that Bufo could do that. And then he came home and he was very changed. And I thought, okay, let's just wait. And then I waited and it didn't change back. And I was really impressed because I know how hard he worked on this for so many years.

[00:03:01] And so it was a very, very wonderful experience to see that medicine can support or open something that was just so locked down that no matter how much you want it in your conscious mind, the subconscious mind will hold it tight shut no matter what you do.

[00:03:24] And who can afford to work with somebody that can-- yes, we can take influence on the subconscious mind. That's what I do every single day, but who can afford to have me 24 hours doing that work, and who can go through something like this with another person? It's not possible. But to have a medicine that is so extreme, to get the cat out of the house for a second so that the mice can come up on the table, that's--

[00:03:49] Luke: Is that a German analogy that you translated? I've never heard that. I'm like, that can't be American. That's a good one.

[00:03:58] Cru: Cat is out of the house so the mice can come out of the walls and dance on the table.

[00:04:03] Luke: I love that.

[00:04:04] Cru: And that is basically when the ego is out of the house, which is what 5-MeO-DMT in that quantity does, is that the ego is gone and then all the subconscious mind trauma and programming and all of that can release because the ego is the one that holds on to these things subconsciously of course. Or maybe because of that so strongly, the release of the ego for a few minutes only because Bufo is so short just allows all of that trauma to come up.

[00:04:42] And once it's deprogrammed or released or whatever is your personal journey with Bufo, it's different for everybody, when the ego comes back, then there's a whole lot of stuff that is not there anymore. And then you can also do the work. After Bufo is before the work.

[00:05:06] Bufo just makes it possible that you can actually progress in whatever. It's not the fix. It's just an opener and it releases things so that you can progress on that path on which you were probably already, otherwise you wouldn't come to do Bufo.

[00:05:28] Luke: So you see Philip having a block that he couldn't overcome for a long time, no matter how hard he tried. He goes and has the experience, comes back, there's a discernible change. You wait it out to see if that change is lasting. It was. Then you make the decision to go. Did you go to the same facilitator that he worked with?

[00:05:51] Cru: No, he facilitated with someone that doesn't do this full dose thing. And I already knew for what I wanted to do this with. In this time, parallel to his experience, I have uncovered something, and I've had huge problems my whole life around my period. I had huge fibroids also in my uterus and outside of my uterus, and I was in excruciating pain every single time every month.

[00:06:25] Luke: Was this before or after you had kids?

[00:06:28] Cru: Always.

[00:06:28] Luke: Oh, before and after.

[00:06:30] Cru: Yeah. I've always had this my whole life, and I was bleeding like I could win something with bleeding, more than everybody else.

[00:06:40] Luke: You're creating a crime scene every 28 days.

[00:06:43] Cru: I'm telling you.

[00:06:44] Luke: Yeah.

[00:06:45] Cru: I'm 50, and I still run around with having to now-- not anymore, but until just a few years ago, I still had situations in public, because it was too much to be able to handle sometimes. So it was a very tough time for me and nothing really resolved it.

[00:07:09] So a similar thing, like Philip's, for him it was not periods, obviously, but for me, I just couldn't put my finger on and find out why I have this. And you can't resolve a physical problem if you don't know why you have it. We are not single physical beings. We're very complex systems, and we use physical problems often as teachers in order to heal something that desperately needs healing.

[00:07:43] And we have put it so far away that we can't see it or can't get in contact with it, so we get sick or get physical problems, then we have to address it then. And I just couldn't fix it. I'm a pretty good fixer, but I was completely at a loss of what to do with this. And then I thought, hmm, maybe medicine, maybe Bufo.

[00:08:13] But I wanted a private ceremony with a full dose facilitation. And there's not so many out there that dare to do that. And so we looked for someone in Costa Rica and found someone there, but this person only did groups and I didn't want a group because I work with groups and with people all the time.

[00:08:38] I wanted something personal and private for me. So I don't have to be involved in somebody else's. Because that's my initial response always when somebody is going through something, to support and to hold space. Because that's what I do my whole life already. And so this guy was like, no, I'm not doing private.

[00:09:00] The group is good. You can come here if you want this. He really tested it, whether I wanted it or not. And of course I went, and that was the most amazing thing that I can-- I have a memory of all my lives. I have not come into this life with this wipe out.

[00:09:28] Luke: Really?

[00:09:29] Cru: Yes. For me, the future, the past, and the presents are all in a 360 existence with one another. So sometimes I don't even know if what I'm thinking is in the future could be in the past or other way around because it's so simultaneous. And it has always been like this.

[00:09:49] Even as a child, I experienced the world like that. Bufo was like I came home and understood suddenly things that I knew all the time and experienced, but in such a more extreme way. And to experience what you know, it's a completely different thing than just knowing something. And that is what 5-MeO-DMT does.

[00:10:20] Luke: 100%. I relate to that.

[00:10:22] Cru: Yeah. And so that was so confirming because also I felt like I was always weird. As a child, I've often felt like I was wrong because I was so different than everybody else around me. And so that Bufo experience to experience that that was never wrong. That was just what that was, an experience in a different way, maybe in a more holistic way or in a more 360 way.

[00:10:55] So I remember this moment when I was so afraid that I couldn't inhale it because I've never smoked. I was not experienced with things like this, and so I thought, oh my God, if I don't get that medicine in there-- and so I was so afraid of that. I wasn't even afraid of what the medicine could do with me. I didn't do much research on this. I just saw Philip change in a way, and that convinced me. And so I went to this place and I'm like--

[00:11:26] Luke: Did you end up going to a group?

[00:11:28] Cru: Yes.

[00:11:28] Luke: Oh, okay.

[00:11:29] Cru: It was a big group, 16 people.

[00:11:31] Luke: Really?

[00:11:32] Cru: Yes. And thank God I was not the first one. So I could see what happened. And you see things when you see people do Bufo. I was like, okay. But then I sat there, and they do this so great. They're the way, how they did it, and you just do whatever they say. And they told us before, take more medicine when we tell you more, inhale more.

[00:11:59] And even if you think you can't inhale more, trust me, you can. So I just did whatever-- I was crying while I was reading the prayer that you're reading for yourself. And then I was just surrendering. And I think that is a really good thing to do when you do Bufo, is to surrender.

[00:12:21] Luke: Oh man, if you don't--

[00:12:22] Cru: Yeah, it's a fight.

[00:12:23] Luke: You're going to have a rough ride.

[00:12:25] Cru: And I inhale this medicine and then I hear them say more, more, more, more, more, more, and then I'm gone. And all the creation, everything, every single thing that I had always known, I was in it. I was it. And it was so profound. And then I could feel that layer, that ego layer like me, this is me.

[00:12:54] And I think my disease has already brought me to my knees quite a bit in this life, so I was not so attached to my ego anymore and at the point where I went to do Bufo. So I could still feel it, but it was so wonderful to just release it. And then I went beyond everything.

[00:13:19] And then you come to nothing, and that was the scariest thing that I have ever in my-- I'm not a scared person. I think maybe because I have seen so much and experienced so much, I don't have so many fears. But nothing? That was very scary.

[00:13:40] Luke: Oh man.

[00:13:41] Cru: It was so scary.

[00:13:44] Luke: I was going to say to me, but it's not to me, the real me. To the ego, it's ultimate highest fear is non-existence. And I think that's why God has bestowed us with this alternate persona, is to make sure that the body stays alive. It's really like a servant in its highest role and capacity, even though obviously it becomes the master for many of us, which leads to all the pain we see in the world.

[00:14:14] But in the second experience I had, and it took months to figure out to uncover what this was, but I was asked to look at something. You know how in journeys sometimes it's like you'll have this clue? Do you want to go down this path and explore this thing? And I'm always a yes, even if it's scary.

[00:14:39] Looking at my traumas and abuse I endured as a kid, gross stuff that I've done in my life, whatever. I don't care how much shame or pain is attached to it. I know there's healing on the other side. So I have a pretty good level of grit and a willingness to just-- sometimes I have to take a breath, take off the eye mask, like, all right, we're going into some gnarly shit. Can you do this? Let's go. Let's go. And I surrender and I go there.

[00:15:04] But this is the only time I've ever had where it was inviting me, God or whatever, higher self was inviting me to explore something. And I said out loud, I sat up and I went, no, too soon. No, I'm not ready. Pull the plug. I'm out. I'm out. Those are the words I said. I sat up and I freaked out. I resisted.

[00:15:26] And then a series of events happened and I chilled out and I surrendered and the rest of it was fine. But it was a true classical ego death. And had this whole hallucination that the whole world was watching me on social media and I just embarrassed myself. And it was just so humiliating because I was being a show off, like, I'm doing Bufo. It was this whole thing, this whole mental construct that happened in probably two minutes of time.

[00:15:57] Cru: Funny that you picked Bufo.

[00:15:58] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[00:16:00] Cru: With this mentality, Bufo is basically the cure for that.

[00:16:04] Luke: Yeah. But anyway, moral of the story is, and then we'll get back to yours, to your point, the non-existence. So I'm integrating this process. It's when we first came to Austin in late 2020 to look for houses and stuff. And so in the days following that, I was like, what did I say no to? What was the question? What was I being asked to see? Because I think I'm willing to look at anything.

[00:16:34] And you can never be certain, but the best estimate I could come up with, what I was saying no to, was to experience non-existence, not death, worse than death. Death, you were first alive and then you died. Non-existence is for eternity, the you that you think you are as a single point of consciousness never was, and never will be. And I think that's what it was, but it's not me that's afraid of that. It's the ego, because that's the thing it's fighting against all the time.

[00:17:07] It wants to assert itself and be here and be somebody and have a name and a life and a story and make your mark and leave your legacy and all of that stuff. And it was such a beautiful ass kicking experience because the funniest thing about it was that if it's true, which I think it is, that that's what I was resisting, was the experience of non-existence that the true void beyond the void, the ego, God bless my little ego.

[00:17:37] It's almost cute how dumb it is. When it put up that fight, the thing it was afraid of had just happened. I was already in the field where it wasn't there. And then it's like it caught on to what was going on. And as the persona started to re-emerge back into the field, back into the room, then the ego is like, hold up, we're not going there. But it was too late.

[00:18:04] It already missed the boat. We already were in the totality of all creation, so to speak. So it was such a beautiful, beautiful way to integrate the relationship with ego, to see it as almost like a pet or a child and a friend that's just afraid all the time. It's just terrified.

[00:18:29] Cru: And the resolved ego, like the one that is free from experience or resonance with experience is a wonderful thing, because that is the one that makes it possible that we even experience anything. It's just that often we have egos that are so unresolved and so attached to awful experience and always in resonance with things that are not even part of this time right now.

[00:19:04] There's a part of your aura that stores everything that you have ever experienced as you being that frequency that once came out of the big ocean that dropped that has then had many, many versions of itself. And all of that is there. And our emotional body that is very strongly in resonance with our ego is right next to that storage unit, where you have all these stories.

[00:19:33] And if you have experienced a lot of pain and suffering and God knows what, having tremendous amounts of power and using those in whichever ways, there's so many things in every one of our stories that the emotional body reacts a lot to things that have nothing to do with this life right now or with this moment.

[00:19:58] And then the ego is always in response with that and creates a reality based on things that are simultaneous, but in the past, if we think of it as a linear thing as time. So it has nothing to do with this moment that we have our consciousness with right now.

[00:20:23] Once we resolve and understand that that has nothing to do with this moment and this moment is free and the ego is free of this attachment to these experiences, then we will have a really beautiful experience with the ego. We're moving there as humanity. It's a process.

[00:20:43] We were not meant to be there in the last, I don't even know how long, but since this round started, we only just crossed the threshold 12 years ago where we're now intended to make experience of oneness. This is also why we have this trend with the medicines right now. All of these medicines that allow us to go beyond our five sensory experience, there's a huge trend right now.

[00:21:12] It has always been here. It has always served humanity but in very, very small quantities. It didn't reach masses. And now we're seeing ayahuasca, and psilocybin, and DMT, and Bufo skyrocket. It's a thing. A lot of people are now leaving this five sensory experience behind and understand that there's so much more to us. And everybody's wants to also now know who they really are.

[00:21:53] And that's a big driver because we were so far removed from what we are that this longing is always searching. It's so deep in us. And we have always searched in material things and in status and other people to find out who we are. And so now that we have crossed the threshold 12 years ago, we're now moving towards, oh, this is not outside of me. This is actually an internal process, an intrinsic experience to understand who I am.

[00:22:33] And then suddenly that cup that never seems to fill starts to form a bottom so that whatever we find out will then actually also fulfill us or feel like we are fulfilled. And medicine is an amazing opener to open these senses with which we actually can learn who we really are in this whole creation as long as we see it as a dual experience.

[00:23:03] We will always be somebody because in a dual existence, in a creation in which two things are in resonance with one another, we will always be something. It's just that, of course, we've always looked to be something based on the wrong markers. Medicine opens these things and also can show a lot of things, can help to resolve these ego things.

[00:23:39] I haven't only done Bufo four times. So after that first time, I had the worst night. I was so afraid. I've never been afraid like this in my life. And I realized also what I had always known, but still experienced then that there really is only me. And that there really is only you from your perspective and that I don't exist in your perspective and you don't exist in mine.

[00:24:12] And so it's all just a reflection of a projection, and that brings all the balls home into my court, which gives me the maximum power over my life. It's maximum empowerment which is great, but it also is maximum responsibility for every single thing that happens to me.

[00:24:35] And I knew that. My whole teaching is based on that all my life already, but to experience it, that was really-- and this nothingness was, I can't even describe how scary that was. Because really when nothing exists, then really nothing exists.

[00:24:57] It doesn't need to be in somewhere. That was always my question. My whole mind is always trying to figure out, where is it inside, and what is outside of it, creation? And then, of course, with time and getting older, I realized that that is something my mind cannot comprehend yet.

[00:25:17] We will get there, but it will take some time. And then to go into Bufo and experience that really what it means when there is nothing, that it doesn't need to be inside, it answered so many of my questions in a way. I didn't even know I still had those questions, but obviously I did.

[00:25:37] And so the next morning I came to the person that facilitated and said, I don't know if a person like me that is already so open-- I'm so open since my birth. I'm working with energy. I experience the world in a completely different way, like other people do on mushrooms maybe, this is my every day.

[00:25:56] So I said to him, I think somebody like me shouldn't do this so often. I think I passed today. And he's like, if you think that you need to pass, then you need to do it again. So he would not let me out. He was a really, really, really good facilitator.

[00:26:15] Luke: What you speak to, to me, it'd almost be summarized in awareness. It's not a word I use a lot, but I think beyond the confines of our experience as a person with the intellect and the body and the ego structure and all these things, it's like what's beyond and behind that is just pure awareness.

[00:26:39] And so to me that place of emptiness, that place of non-existence, is devoid of everything except awareness, because there's still a you that's aware that there's nothing. If there's truly nothing, there wouldn't be a you to experience the nothing.

[00:26:58] So it's like that place where the observer and the observed become unified in pure awareness, which, like you said, you did very well in your life and your spiritual progress without ever using medicine. And I made it 22 years on my path before-- I've done a lot of psychedelics when I was a kid, very recklessly, which I don't advise. Actually, very ill advised. I'll go even further.

[00:27:25] Cru: Yes. It'd be good you grow roots when you're a kid and not crown.

[00:27:29] Luke: I live to tell the tale, but 22 years of all the therapy and years of meditation, just working really hard on myself. And like your husband, Philip, there were certain things I just could not get past.

[00:27:45] There was just a certain point where I would hit a wall. For me, it was mostly around relationships, not friendships, but romantic relationships. Just like, wow, I've done all this work and I am still a goddamn infant in this area. Because of my trauma. Just this programming that I couldn't overcome to your point of the subconscious mind. There were just things lodged too far back that I could never pray or journal or therapy my way out of.

[00:28:16] But having had so many profound experiences of pure awareness, I think the integration for me has been learning how to build a relationship with that pure awareness so that I can be here with you in that state of awareness and not be on psychedelics and still be able to work my iPad and know where the mic is and not start jumping over the balcony or laughing my ass off, or crying, or whatever.

[00:28:44] I need the structure of this realm, but there's always a-- it's like, if you've been in the pool and you've been totally submerged, you can't live in the pool because you'll drown, but you can climb back up onto the deck and keep a toe in the water.

[00:29:01] And I think that's my relationship to reality and the medicine space and all of that, is just keeping awareness that's like, okay, the money, stuff that comes up, relationships, people dying, people getting sick, the government's imposition, all these things are real quotes, but not from a place of pure awareness.

[00:29:21] It's all a projection. It's all a hologram. It's all just part of the game. So I can play the game and the only way to win the game is remembering that it's a game and keeping part of my attention in that awareness, and enable me to be present and in the flow and timeless and talk to a beautiful soul like you and really enjoy it and hopefully provide an experience that you enjoy as well. But yeah, I can't imagine my life without--

[00:29:51] Cru: This is all about it.

[00:29:52] Luke: Without having those touch points of at least seeing the light for a moment. Even if it was 10 minutes or two hours or whatever, it should be like, okay. I've seen the Holy Land. I know it's real. Now it's time to go back and chop wood and carry water. And sometimes that's difficult, but it's much less difficult when I think--

[00:30:09] Cru: Oh, it's so much less difficult.

[00:30:12] Luke: Tell me about what happened in your body after that first experience or subsequent experiences. Did you see any resolution to the problems you were having?

[00:30:20] Cru: Actually, the first day was so-- I don't know what was happening. A lot of people move a lot with physical trauma. That didn't happen for me. I was like a corpse, gone. Adios. And then I came back and it was beautiful to come back.

[00:30:46] And then I came the next day. Didn't want to do it. Then he made me-- I mean, he didn't make me, but he said, if you think that you don't-- and I heard him. Of course, I can resonate when something is truth. And so I sat there. Thought I'm dying of fear. Went in again and went straight back to the nothing again and realize that everything and nothing is always at the same time.

[00:31:13] It's very hard for the mind, but when that realization came, then the fear left me. Suddenly I understood it doesn't matter. It's really almost comical how it matters so much to us, whether something is or is not. And in this realization that it doesn't matter because all of it is always at the same time, there's nothing and there's everything always at the same time.

[00:31:45] Luke: So true. And it's so true that the intellect will never get that.

[00:31:54] Cru: Yeah, we will get that, but we will need a bit more brain capacity.

[00:31:58] Luke: It's beyond mind.

[00:32:00] Cru: I'll get there in a second. But anyway, with this realization, something released in me. I'm a very motherly person, so even though I never wanted children and then I got pregnant and had a child, I realized that that is the best thing that I can do. I've always been a person that cared a lot for others, but in becoming a mother, I realized how much that is really my essence to be a mother. And not only in the way to a child, but also in the way to the world and to creation. And I realized, oh my God, have I held on to the world in my uterus, always holding space, always wombing.

[00:32:53] Because I didn't live so many lifetimes as a human being, I existed way more in frequency, if that's maybe the easiest way to understand it, or consciousness, but with a specific self-awareness because everything that is in creation has a self-awareness, but it doesn't have to be physical.

[00:33:19] So like angels, those are self-aware consciousness fields that are part of this whole creation. And sometimes they incarnate and sometimes they don't. And I didn't much. So it was not my purpose. My purpose was a different thing. Every single thing that exists has a purpose in the whole symphony of everything. So to know that and do that is a really fulfilling thing. And so that's what I did. And until I accidentally did a few human rounds.

[00:33:57] Luke: Oops.

[00:33:58] Cru: Yeah. In Atlantis, I got sucked into this. And then I did a few rounds of this here, and those were not all so pretty because I also had no clue how to do this in a five sensory experience in a world that was still so low vibrating at the time.

[00:34:21] And so seeing all this pain that is within creation in this experience of creation, how we experience it because we were on a path of separation, that just made me always want to cradle everything and hold. And this life I have chosen to stop this idea that something else needs to be held, needs to be taken care of.

[00:35:00] Because first of all, there's nothing else other than me. And second, there is everybody else that is so beautiful and empowered and a full creator being and can take care of themselves. That doesn't mean that I become a selfish person or a person that has no compassion or doesn't want to help, but it's a completely different approach to the world to say, namaste. I see you, and I see you in all your power, even though right now you feel completely disempowered.

[00:35:32] I see your power and that empowers the other person right away. So that was my resolve from this. And so, of course, that resolved, not immediately. It was immediately pain free, but the bleeding and the fibroids and creation that I was also holding on to in here that I did not let freely just happen, that did not go away until two months later, I came back with my son to do Bufo. He was 19 at the time, and he was so addicted to weed.

[00:36:14] He was so angry, and he's a peace being. He was for the first time in an experience of the other side of peace, and I had to let him, which was a really tough thing as a mother also to let your child do whatever its soul has chosen. So I watched this for many years until he was ready to change something, and that was around 19 years old.

[00:36:45] And I asked him, dad made this experience. I made this experience. If you want out and you want to restart, reset this whole thing, come do Bufo. And he saw the changes in dad, and he saw the changes in me, for my period, because he knows how I suffered every single month for five days. I was nearly impossible to live.

[00:37:15] And so he chose to do it. And so we went again, and that was a facilitation with only one time, so not two consecutive days. And he went in so nervous. When your child is going in there and you know what's going to come, that was so--

[00:37:33] Luke: And you can't possibly prepare someone.

[00:37:35] Cru: You can't do anything. Lou is pretty prepared because he grew up with me. He's very aware of himself. Both my kids were raised to be in great attunement to their multidimensional self. But then the weed, that was also creating that anger and that despair and all of that, and that removal, the disassociation from yourself that happens with weed.

[00:38:07] But also knowing that that is all just an illusion, then coming out of it and being angry that you lost yourself-- oh, it was just such a mess. And he went in. The facilitator was amazing. He took Lou away and asked him, is this something you want or is this something your parents want? What reasons do you have to be here? All the right questions, really.

[00:38:30] And Lou was very much for himself there. And so he went in. He was holding on for-- seven minutes, he was completely gone and his body was so tight. And then you could see when he released, and then he came out. Oh my God, the healing that took place for us as a family, Phillip was there and I was there and Lou was there. Our little son, he didn't come.

[00:39:02] There's no words that would ever describe the healing that took place in those seven minutes. Once he came out of it enough, he looked at me and said, mom, it's all so irrelevant. And I knew that he had gone all the way.

[00:39:29] Luke: Yeah. Oh, I love it.

[00:39:33] Cru: And the next thing he says, because Phillip is not Lou's biological dad-- Lou has two dads basically, his biological daddy and-- the next thing he said, mom, dad has to do this. And Molly, which is my mother. So he was already in this, oh my God, this is the answer. To these people that search for so long-- and so that was the first things he said to me.

[00:40:03] And I knew that this is going to change his life. And sure enough, his addiction was gone. This is what Bufo does. It cures addiction because you understand that you are everything that there is, divine and beautiful and this beautiful source.

[00:40:18] Cru: His addiction was cleared after this event. He still did go back to smoking weed once in a while, but there was nothing like this anger that happened when he didn't. And he smoked for a very long time, not at all.

[00:40:37] And he went back to school, which he finished his high school in Germany and then was done with it. And I said, I don't ever, ever, ever want to go back to school. So he didn't want to go to university. Even in this university process, moving towards Bufo and after he started university, he's a rapper, and he starts music business. And so now in this whole journey, since then, he came back to Bufo one more time, and since then he stopped completely being destructive to himself.

[00:41:13] And that is the point. You stop being constructive to yourself when you understand that you are every single thing that there is and that you're divine and beautiful and complete. And when you have this self-awareness subconsciously, it's not-- often people come out of Bufo and have no recollection of what they experienced, and that's okay.

[00:41:38] Because it is really all about the subconscious mind and releasing trauma and opening doors. And they can open into our conscious mind with time. For Lou, it wasn't like that. He remembered it all, and he was just so aware of that, the way how creation works and how we are part of something so big.

[00:42:04] And then you stop being destructive to that because all you do is you're hurting yourself. Why disassociate from something so beautiful? And everything is possible to resolve. And so that was a really beautiful thing to witness for me down the road with his journey. But what happened also for me is that something inside of me just released.

[00:42:27] I had my journey afterwards. So Lou was first and then there were a few other people and then it was me and then was Philip. So that was my third journey in that realm. And in that moment, when Lou found his way, something in me released in my uterus. I could feel that how layers and layers and layers and layers and layers of holding as a mother from the highest perspective, we're just popping one after the other. It's like balloons pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

[00:43:04] Luke: Wow.

[00:43:08] Cru: I felt like, am I giving birth now? So this is how it felt like. It popped all away. And then there was just me, and all I needed to hold was me. I don't have to carry anybody. I don't have to hold anybody. I don't have to heal anybody.

[00:43:22] I don't have to fix anything. It was just such a release. And it was all here. I was bleeding for the whole world. I was bleeding for every single woman, and I was bleeding for every pain and suffering. I took that all on me out of, I know why I did this, but I just didn't know how to let go of it.

[00:43:50] And with Lou's journey, something healed in me that I was able to release this full on. And then I was completely symptom free and I knew I have to have a surgery and get these things out. I had one and a half kilos of mass in there. That's a lot of mass.

[00:44:09] Luke: Wow. Fibroids?

[00:44:11] Cru: Mm-hmm. I had a second uterus, a fibroid living next to my-- so it was excruciating, and the whole uterus is filled with fibroids, and I had so much stuff in there. It's all out now. I found an amazing surgeon in Germany that did non-invasive surgery with me, took all of that mess out and I have all my organs intact. So if I decide in 50 years that I want to have another baby, I can still have one.

[00:44:43] Luke: But science catches up with consciousness.

[00:44:48] Cru: We don't have to die.

[00:44:50] Luke: What a blessing though. Because I know of women who had issues with fibroids and stuff--

[00:44:57] Cru: So many of them.

[00:44:58] Luke: Some have had hysterectomies and all kinds of, really, what proved to be later damaging surgery is just disrupting their endocrine system so radically that it causes a lot of problems.

[00:45:11] Cru: Also their energy system and what that means to a woman on an emotional level too. No matter what stage they are, even if they had their babies already, we're meant to be whole. And sometimes, yes, we have no choice, but fibroids, there is so many ways to deal with that today without having to lose your organs.

[00:45:38] Luke: Yeah.

[00:45:40] Cru: But it's not popular here in the US.

[00:45:44] Luke: It's interesting, Germany and Russia have both been so much more advanced in certain ways medically and in terms of healing technologies and things like that. I remember 25-plus years ago when I got into biofeedback machines and all this kind of stuff and advanced ozone machines for 10-pass ozone. And most of the technologies came from Germany.

[00:46:08] Cru: Yeah. My mom is a naturopathic doctor. I remember when she trained. She trained when I was maybe six or so. And at the time she was looked upon like she was the devil. It was crazy. But that movement just would not let go. And then also, Germany is earth, from the elements, and here we are air in America.

[00:46:38] Also, Germany's old souls. The whole Europe is old souls, and America is young souls. Young souls, they don't care. They just do whatever they want. And the old souls, they have already come down from that phase where we do whatever we want and don't care. It's easier for these things to develop and bring-- creation can bring forth things in certain environments better than in others.

[00:47:11] There's so much logic actually in creation, if you understand the deeper workings and then you understand why things are here more advanced than they are there and then other things. For instance, entrepreneurs have a much better life in America because America, young souls, they're like, yeah, let's do it. If you go to Europe, it's like, well, I don't know. Been there, done that. I don't know. Let's think about that.

[00:47:39] Luke: In Europe, they're like, I don't know, we need our siesta time in the afternoon. I don't want to work that hard.

[00:47:44] Cru: Yeah.

[00:47:46] Luke: It's funny how souls incarnate in different geographic locations, like popcorn. I've always been very interested in why, at least in our recent history, so many enlightened beings have cropped up in India. And those are always the--

[00:48:02] Cru: India is the crown chakra of the world.

[00:48:06] Luke: Oh, okay.

[00:48:07] Cru: America is the throat chakra of the world, part of the US. And then we have--

[00:48:14] Luke: Where do you get these ideas from?

[00:48:17] Cru: You can read it. I mean, I can read it.

[00:48:21] Luke: Okay.

[00:48:22] Cru: Yeah, when you can read energy fields, and I have been around now for a very long time reading this creation, finding joy now actually in my humanness a lot now that I have experienced with 5-MeO-DMT in the human experience to experience oneness and everything that has just led me to wonderfully embrace my humanness and be very limited in ways. I'm never really limited, of course, but I've always loved to live life.

[00:49:02] I'm a very down to earth person. You can have so much fun with me in so many ways. I love skiing. That's all I did for a very, very long time, and climbing, and being with friends, and cooking.

[00:49:16] Luke: Being a German, where did you ski? Would you ski in Austria or something? Oh, okay.

[00:49:20] Cru: In Austria. Every year my dad took us to Austria several times, and then I moved to Austria. I lived in the Alps and skied the whole winter.

[00:49:28] Luke: Cool. I've always wanted to go there in the summer. I'm not really a fan of snow.

[00:49:32] Cru: Oh yeah. You will love it in the summer too.

[00:49:34] Luke: I'd love to go there in the summer. It looks so beautiful.

[00:49:36] Cru: Yeah. We have the next training blog of the healer training in Innsbruck, in the mountains on a lake.

[00:49:43] Luke: That is a great segue. Thank you for that. Tell us about the way you work with people. I did a session with you some time ago when I was working on the energetic side of an issue that I was having. I really enjoyed our time together. And I remember at that time, you're like, well, I would love to keep doing this with you, but I have a ton of other clients. And I was like, oh, okay. This is her thing. This is what she does. She's not just doing me a favor. This is her thing.

[00:50:06] Cru: Yeah, that's my thing.

[00:50:07] Luke: So you're now based a lot of the time in Costa Rica about which I'm very envious. But you have these long-form coaching or training programs for smaller groups of people, which I think is an interesting model and unlike what many other people do in this space, where they have, a couple hundred people in their group and it's a month long or three months long. It seems like yours is a bit more intensive and personal. So tell me about how you help other people.

[00:50:39] Cru: Mm. So really, I think that the whole purpose of my existence is to remind everybody to what they really are in their multi-sensory experience, but also how do I translate that essence of my being into the world? So this is really my gift to this creation, is to know you, to see you in your totality or your completeness or whatever you want to call it, and find ways with you together to implement that.

[00:51:17] And those things are not things that we learn or change in a day. I can change many things for you quickly, but then you will have them changed, but you have no muscle that you trained in order to live that. So we have gotten used to how we think about ourselves so long that now I take that away from you.

[00:51:42] I give you something else, and then you're like, okay, but now what? What to do with it? It's like putting somebody on skis, or you can let them watch a million YouTube videos about skiing and everything. But they will still have to go and actually ski and use those muscles. We can even download it into your system that the muscles know what to do, but they will still not be able to do it because the muscle doesn't have the strength to hold that performance or whatever it is.

[00:52:11] I often use the triple axel in ice skating as an example. I can download all of that into you. Your muscle and every cell knows exactly what to do, and then I put you on the ice and you will still not get off the ground because your muscle doesn't have the strength to come off the ice.

[00:52:28] So to give healing time and also understanding yourself is a beautiful act of self-love and also executed love, from my perspective. I'm not expecting you to change in one session or three, and I'm not expecting you to learn all sorts of techniques and then go out there and do all sorts of generic techniques.

[00:52:56] I also don't expect you to learn, to get to know yourself in three months. That is impossible. When you have gotten to know somebody over the course of however long, like whenever you end up in one of my trainings, these things take time, and time is a beautiful thing that was given to us in order to experience all stages of our existence.

[00:53:22] And so when we give things time, then we give them also a lot of love and then they change much easier. And the most important thing is that they actually last. Because I have, of course, began to work very early in my life with this stuff, not as work, but people came to me and asked me questions.

[00:53:45] Adults came to me and asked me questions because they had this feeling that they could ask me something and I would give them answers, not even knowing what I'm doing. I was so little, and my mom fostered it. She was really good at understanding what is happening. And so I never really lost that ability, but I wanted to actually lose it for some time, like most healers, that they don't want to be healers.

[00:54:10] And also when you feel like you have to save everybody all the time. But now with the years of experience, since I'm working with this, I learned very quickly that it doesn't satisfy me to create this momentary boom. Oh, wow. That's amazing. Yeah, I feel so much better.

[00:54:32] And then you come back to me three months later and you're still back to where you came with the last time, or maybe not completely back, but I realized that lasting change where you don't need me to hold space or to move you when you need moving through something that just needs time.

[00:54:55] And so I have created this program where people commit to one year in a one-on-one program where we give it as much time or as little time as it needs in that year. So I can distribute time wherever I feel like it's necessary. And often when people are being asked, so what did she do with you? They say, I don't know, but it's different now.

[00:55:23] And this is actually how change implements and becomes lasting, by you not even knowing what it was, because it's not one single thing that does it. And also, to always apply to the system that is right now, you are now a different person than you will be tomorrow because everything is always different all the time.

[00:55:45] And if I have that security of knowing that I will be with you over some time, I can allow your system to change with me for this moment in the way it can for this moment. And I don't have a concept. I don't apply any concepts. People that come to me, you're my concept. You're my guide.

[00:56:07] I read, where is your system ready to change? And then I apply that. And if there's nothing that wants to change on that day, I can also just chill and say, hey, today there's nothing that wants to change. Let's just leave it. Or sometimes it's a lot of understanding your life better.

[00:56:25] And then sometimes it's more energy work. And so if I have that luxury of time, then I can be very free and very courageous in the approach of how to combine it. And then you will become yourself more and more and then you will know how to do that when I'm not there. So my interest is not in creating a following. My interest is in creating a leader, somebody that knows who they are and then do themselves in this creation.

[00:57:01] And so there's also the healer training, which is also over the course of a year, and that is the same thing. You cannot read somebody their essence without prepping them and without integrating that, and then without giving them time to go through everything that you're going through when you have come home and you understood what that means to be home and what that feels like, and then give them immediately a concept in which they can pour into, because that's also part of the training, is then reading the concept, the structure in which your essence can pour into so it can create manifestation.

[00:57:44] That is, I think, how we should educate in the future, the whole world, by asking our children, hey, who are you, and where are you coming from? And tell me about you. Tell me about your gifts. How can I support you to unfold that and become that? Because really, all souls long to be themselves.

[00:58:12] It's just that we have learned to compensate with other things. And that doesn't mean that we can't enjoy things. I really enjoy things. I love skiing. I still love all these very worldly things. I love fast cars and stuff like that. We don't have to resent all of the wonderful things in the world just because they're not so holy.

[00:58:38] We can have it all. We just can't be attached to it, and we can't compensate with them. We can, but it's never going to feel fulfilled. And so by knowing who you are and giving that time to implement that and then find the structure that this wants to pour into manifestation, and then to give it more time with that to work with this and then identify blockages and la la la, which in a year's time, there's a lot of time for that.

[00:59:09] So I think that is a beautiful luxury to have, and it's a very gentle approach to healing. We don't kick our children when they don't get up right away and walk, maybe. I don't know. That might have happened, but our nature is not to force that walking process. Maybe some parents do that.

[00:59:34] But in general, we let the child crawl and then pull themselves up. No child has ever said, oh, I won't walk. Every child gets up over and over again and eventually they walk. And this is the same thing with everything really. And so I like that. Of course, with Bufo, we do the retreats, and they're only five days in total. And there's two journeys.

[01:00:07] Luke: And you do this at your property in Costa Rica.

[01:00:11] Cru: Yes, yes. And we prepare them well.

[01:00:14] Luke: You're near Santa Teresa?

[01:00:17] Cru: Mm-hmm. Five minutes from Santa Teresa.

[01:00:19] Luke: Oh, that close.

[01:00:19] Cru: Yeah, very close.

[01:00:20] Luke: Oh, wow.

[01:00:21] Cru: Santa Teresa, that's where we shop.

[01:00:23] Luke: That's your town?

[01:00:24] Cru: Yeah. We have a little supermarket in Playa Hermosa. We're one beach up basically. So next village.

[01:00:31] Luke: I love it down there.

[01:00:32] Cru: Yeah, it's amazing.

[01:00:34] Luke: Yeah. So you do either the year-long program with people, wherein you're working with them one-on-one, but there's obviously a limited number of people that you can take on each year. And then aside from that, you have different groups that come in and do the five-day retreat at your center.

[01:00:54] Cru: Yes. And we also have the training simultaneously. I do also the trainings and then sometimes people come in just for the training. The training, all groups are very small. We hold that very small. We want it that way for a purpose because it gives this space of a family setting. I still have so much ability to attend to each one of them, if they're not so many.

[01:01:22] And here comes me, the mother, again, not because I feel like I have to, but because this is just my essence and me being me. It's nice to hold that space and give that exclusivity to people and that family feeling. So also our place is not so big. We have seven guest houses, so that already limits the amount of people that we can have. And we don't want it bigger.

[01:01:56] It's beautiful in the jungle like that. And we have all this nature. When you wake up from Bufo, you look into this amazing tree, and it's all on grass. So it's the nature, which is the most beautiful way to facilitate any medicine, I think, but especially Bufo because in Bufo sometimes people's bodies--

[01:02:25] Luke: They want to move.

[01:02:26] Cru: They want to move, and they want hit their head on the ground or hit their fists or roll around. And if it's hard underground, then that's not a perfect scenario.

[01:02:37] Luke: I remember a video the first time I think I ever heard of Bufo. I think it was that Hamilton kid. It's a show called Hamilton's Pharmacopeia, I think, on Amazon. It's really cool. In each episode, he goes and learns about and experiences a different psychedelic, and in the Bufo one, it was with, I think, some Native Americans or something in the Southwest, and they did it in a riverbed. And the guy's foaming at the mouth and flying around in the river and stuff.

[01:03:08] And I thought, that's not a great idea. You don't want a bunch of rocks around when your body's doing things that you're unaware of. I've only worked with that indoors, but last time I was in Costa Rica, we did a chaga ceremony under a beautiful tree out on a ranch there. And it was really magical. Yeah. I was like, oh my God, if I lived here, I would be doing this all the time.

[01:03:38] Cru: I don't know about that.

[01:03:41] Luke: That's what I think every time. And then I come back to this reality. I'm like, yeah, no, there's work to be done.

[01:03:47] Cru: That's also good. I think we should not use medicine in a way that we use that as the answer or the space that we want to escape to, just because it feels so much whole. Yes, it does that, but we can have that sensation of wholeness even without medicine by just becoming who we really are, doing the work that needs to be done, and then finding that fulfillment in everyday life, which is possible.

[01:04:19] I prove it over and over again with what I'm doing since a very long time that that is actually what most people feel like, that after they have spent whatever time with me in either one of these, that life becomes more fulfilling and that there's no need to escape anywhere because you come home to what's yourself. And I think that will be the model of the whole new age that we're moving into now.

[01:04:49] We were in a separation existence where we separated from source, and now we're in a unification existence. So now we're moving back to Source, and both games are beautiful games to play, but we're now playing a completely 180 game to what we played before. And so I think more and more, we will see healers in the world that will heal from their own essence and not so much in generic concepts, and then we will maybe also one day see more of this essence reaching bigger crowds.

[01:05:34] And I don't know, we'll see, but there's a lot of stuff coming, and we will see school systems change. We will see children not forgetting who they are. We already see all these amazing awakened souls coming into this world. And we then as a society stamped them with difficult and complicated and impossible to raise and put medicine into them.

[01:05:59] But what they really are is just so wide open and have so much more awareness to existence than maybe the parents or the society in which they get born into. So I was one of a few in the time that I was born 50 years ago. But now there's so many children that are being born like me. It's just that they get raised out of that and that they don't get supported in fostering these abilities and keep that multi-sensory state open.

[01:06:34] And I think that will change. We see it already crumbling. We see that it's not working anymore. We get less and less good results with the system as it is. It's just that we haven't really found the way around the curve yet, even though we are already around the curve. But 12 years, what is that? Nothing compared to how long that was to get there, to get to the curve.

[01:07:06] Luke: The gentleman that I spoke to before you arrived today was talking about that there was a massive inflection point in consciousness in 2012. And we were joking around the Mayan calendar and everyone thought the world was going to end.

[01:07:25] Cru: It didn't. It did end.

[01:07:25] Luke: And all this stuff-- so when you say 12 years, I'm doing my math. You're referring to 2012 also? That's so interesting that both of you find that to be meaningful. After that date passed. I never thought about it ever again because I thought, well, none of the stuff people were talking about came true.

[01:07:41] Cru: Oh, yeah, it all came true. It just came true in a completely different way. We have seen so many deaths already of systems, and we have seen that whole world die. The world of separation died. So do we still play in this? It's almost like nobody told everybody that we're playing a different game now.

[01:08:01] So everybody's still playing, except some, but yes, the world is a completely new world now, and it's never looked better, even though it looks a bit dire right now. But it really did never look better as it does right now. And the inflection of consciousness is because of the reawakening of Earth itself as a creator and remembering herself, basically.

[01:08:27] And now we have different traditions and different healers and gurus and religions and philosophies and stuff like that in the world have titled that event different things, but it's all the same event. If you look from way, way back, you see that what happened is we went from this direction. So that was 2012 years. So this world ended and this world began.

[01:08:58] Luke: That's interesting because I think back to that time, that's when I started to see-- I didn't realize it until this moment, but I'm just tracking that, and that's when I started to see-- throughout the '90s, yoga studios started to become popular and popping up in places that you normally wouldn't have seen them.

[01:09:23] And then around that time, you started to see meditation centers that weren't like a Vipassana center or something, but in the middle of Manhattan, a really cool, hip meditation center and breathwork and sound baths. And that's when I started to hear murmurings of intentional psychedelic use and things like that.

[01:09:44] It's interesting now that you think about it. Yeah, that does make sense. There started to be the trend, and I mean that in a positive sense mostly, towards spirituality and new age ideas and esoteric teachings and things like that.

[01:10:00] Cru: Of course.

[01:10:01] Luke: And then it just has really blown up since then. It's hard to tell. At a point in time, you just think, oh, this is the way it's always been. But if we discipline the mind to go back and think, wow, in 2010, there wasn't all these breathwork places and ice baths and saunas and these biohacking and healing centers and things like Quantum Upgrade and Leela and all these technologies, that stuff was super fringe.

[01:10:28] You had to really be into that stuff to find it. And now it's like, especially in Austin, you could walk out of my house and throw a rock and you'd hit someone that's into meditation or breathwork or ayahuasca or whatever, which I think is mostly a good thing. Of course, people glom on to trends and try to monetize them. And there's the shadow side of it too, of course, but all--

[01:10:52] Cru: We are in a dual world after all.

[01:10:53] Luke: Yeah, but it's all still positive change. So for people that want to work with you in any of the capacities that you just described, I forgot to mention the show notes early, but we're going to link to anything and everything that's linkable at lukestorey.com/cru, C-R-U.

[01:11:10] I know around the time this publishes, you're going to have open enrollment for some of your training and things like that, so I want to make sure that people know they can click on that link or go to that link, lukestorey.com/cru to get more of what you do.

[01:11:25] And I realized also that we have mentioned Philip a number of times and that we're talking about it like, well, yeah, of course, Philip, we know him, but for listeners that have listened to prior episodes, your husband, Philip, of, first I met him through Leela Quantum Tech, the quantum blocks we have all over the freaking house, and then went on to develop Quantum Upgrade, and so he's been on the show, I don't know, three, four times, maybe more, a bunch of times.

[01:11:53] He's one of my favorite guests and favorite people, and so for people needing to make that connection, you are his other half. So that's why we keep referring to him. I was curious about the name Cru, C-R-U. Is that your given name? Is that a German name? Or is that you--

[01:12:09] Cru: It's a spiritual name.

[01:12:10] Luke: Oh, okay.

[01:12:11] Cru: Well, my given name is not much better. My given name is Peri, which is also very unique. It's a Persian name.

[01:12:18] Luke: Oh, okay.

[01:12:20] Cru: And about 20 years ago, I got this spiritual name. I was curious. I heard a person be named different things, and I already was so spiritually aware, but I really never found any teaching that would interest me. I didn't want to do any trainings. My mom was very spiritual, and none of the things that she did I felt like I could find myself in. And then one day I met a lady, and there was something unique about her, and I just wanted to know where she got her name.

[01:12:57] And then she told me, and then I went there and I didn't know anybody there. And I was not very involved in all that spiritual. I have never read a single self-help book or any of these spiritual books or something. I just kept my knowledge in me, and I know everybody else has theirs and it's all part of something bigger. But I don't need to know theirs, and they don't need to know mine.

[01:13:23] I've never written a book yet, and I think if I will, then I will write a novel, The Story of Creation, maybe. That would be a great fantasy book. Yeah, so I went there for a name party and I got my name. And in that moment when I looked into that master's eyes, I picked the one that I liked from-- there were four people. There were 60 people in the room, and it was a name party.

[01:13:54] Everybody can get their spiritual name, and I looked him in the eye and I saw myself. For the first time I saw myself in a way that I could not see it from my own perspective. And I thought that is a true master, somebody that shows me myself and not--

[01:14:16] Luke: Yeah.

[01:14:18] Cru: Because that is what we are. So we've seen it many times in the world, these masters that want you to see them. And you will find whatever you need to find there as well. It's not that this is all wrong. It's wonderful. All of these things are wonderful because they got us to 2012. And that was a very profound moment where I understood, here can I learn to find my ways.

[01:14:58] And so I went to a lot of trainings in this tradition, and it's in Europe, and some of it was in America too. And I learned it was not so much about the teachings there or the techniques and things. It was for me. The core of that tradition was there's only one way, yours. And that just resonated so deeply with my purpose and reminding you of who you are.

[01:15:29] And so I learned to have guidance over my abilities because that is why I ran away from my abilities for quite some time into the mountains, being a climber, being by myself and skiing. You have also peace. Nobody there. You don't have to look at all these auras. I love people so much, and I see all the beauty in everybody, but I see also all the suffering.

[01:15:57] And then in that time I still felt so responsible to fix everything and carry everybody. And so I didn't know how to turn it off, and I learned in that tradition how to not turn it off, but handle it and understand when is it appropriate to be in response to everything that is, and when is it appropriate to just be within an intrinsic experience as a human being with the world and not know every single detail of the person in front of you.

[01:16:30] If you ask me for advice, I can then go into it and read whatever needs to be read in order for you to move on your path. But if I'm here with you as a human to human, I really love to be surprised and to experience you and to get to know you and to let that unfold like a flower. It's also not right there. It's a beautiful process.

[01:16:57] Every spring again, we see it on the trees, and how mesmerized are we every single time when we see those trees start to bloom. And that is the same with people. I love to experience that journey of seeing all stages of somebody and not just know it all at once.

[01:17:19] So I really learned that in that tradition. So that name giving was the start of me actually becoming a much better master of my own abilities. I had these abilities. I do the same thing today that I did as a child. There's nothing different. It's more complete, and there's just more guidance in it. I understand my abilities. So that's why I got my name.

[01:17:47] Luke: Always wondered that.

[01:17:49] Cru: Yeah.

[01:17:49] Luke: After hearing about you from Philip and then meeting you, I thought, that's an interesting name. It always reminds me of the band Motley Crue. You don't have the E on the end, but I was like, oh, Cru, that's a cool name. Tell me about you making the decision to take on the massive responsibility of facilitating Bufo.

[01:18:11] And I ask for many reasons, but one of them is each time I've had that experience, when it's over, I feel like I want to quit everything I'm doing in life and devote my life to that practice and to have the experience of watching people unfold in that way. And then I come back home and there's a bunch of emails and I think, oh God.

[01:18:36] And I've even offered to support just to hold space for facilitators before like, hey, if you ever just need a guy in the room to just lay back in the back of the room and just send blessings and, if anything goes weird, lend a hand.

[01:18:55] Cru: Yeah. Sometimes that's very necessary. Very often that's very necessary.

[01:18:59] Luke: Yeah. I'm not a tough guy or anything, but it wouldn't hurt to have a 6'2 man in room.

[01:19:03] Cru: Yeah, absolutely. Somebody holds that arm down.

[01:19:05] Luke: Exactly. And no one's taken me up on that, which is interesting, but I thought, well, I have this curiosity, and it was the most meaningful experiences of my life. Not even comparable to anything in a different strata of what a powerful experience even means to me.

[01:19:24] So I've attempted to lean in, and then as I said, life happens. I think, well, I'm surrendered to God's will, whatever I'm meant to do. If I'm supposed to just talk to people like you and have these conversations and do the other things I do, I'm here to serve, if that's the thing. But I still always wonder, someday, is there going to be a leg in where--

[01:19:43] Cru: You should come to see us in Costa Rica.

[01:19:44] Luke: Yeah. I think, maybe I'll meet a facilitator that I can train under and then do that. And I just love, frankly, being in the room when it happens. I sat with a friend of mine here on some beautiful land in Texas. And I had intended to actually sit that day. It was about a year ago. And then it didn't feel right for me to do it.

[01:20:07] So I just watched him, and I'm just sitting there like a kid in a candy store, just waiting for that moment. And the whole ritual of it was beautiful. And he takes his dose and lays back, and it's just like, oh man, I just get goose bumps. Because the field is so--

[01:20:24] Cru: We are all every one of another. There's only one that's right.

[01:20:28] Luke: Yeah. Ian said to me the other day when he was here recording, we were talking about spirituality, of course, and he quoted Ramana Maharshi. We were talking about just oneness and all that, and he said, someone asked Ramana Maharshi, and I say this quote all the time on the podcast now, so I apologize to the listeners, but if you could boil down every spiritual teaching in the world to me that's meaningful, his answer exemplified that.

[01:20:58] They said, how do you deal with other people? And he said, there are no other people. That's it. So anyway, I went and held space for my friend and I was just like, oh my God, again. I had that feeling like I need to be doing this every day. Not me journeying, but just like, I want to just be present when people just have that experience.

[01:21:19] So you're one of those people that had the experience and then was like, yeah, I'm doing this. So how did that happen? What's it like? What have been some of your observations? Has anything gone haywire ever with anyone? Tell me what it's like.

[01:21:34] Cru: It goes haywire all the time.

[01:21:37] Luke: I've heard stories from facilitators where people will take off their clothes and just do crazy shit.

[01:21:44] Cru: Yeah, I've seen it all.

[01:21:46] Luke: You have to be prepared for some wild stuff with that particular medicine.

[01:21:50] Cru: Yes, that medicine is really something that it takes a very experienced person to facilitate this medicine in the doses that we facilitate. You can also microdose before. It's not really microdosing. You still go, but--

[01:22:08] Luke: I've tried that. I've tried that and it was not micro.

[01:22:12] Cru: No, yeah. There's many ways to do Bufo, but how we do it is that we give a full dose, which is really getting you to the other side.

[01:22:26] Luke: What are we talking in terms of milligrams? Or do you even know?

[01:22:29] Cru: I don't know that.

[01:22:29] Luke: Oh, okay. Because some people will weigh it.

[01:22:33] Cru: Yeah. He weighs it.

[01:22:34] Luke: Oh, okay.

[01:22:35] Cru: I don't involve in that part. I'm just so deeply immersed with the person in their journey. It's almost like that this person that goes is becoming one with me or become one with that person. And if I have to focus on all the other things-- we have a beautiful team of people that do their part, and I'm also the one that will have you sleep in my bedroom all night if you can't sleep at night.

[01:23:11] We do it very differently than most places where you go and you have your experience and you go back to your hotel and then there's really nobody there. I had that experience, and I chose not to do that that way. It doesn't matter if it's not like that, maybe. It depends.

[01:23:30] You will get what you're supposed to have, but I just wanted to create a different kind of a feel, a very good preparation, whatever that experience is like, and then have a very good aftercare and then go into the world with this ability to not let that wreck you because that can also do that.

[01:23:53] This is a whole lot of opening that happens with so much medicine, and it is really good when that finds ground in your everyday life and you can combine these two things because they're not separate. Our everyday life in this five sensory, or even if we're already in a greater awareness experience, it's not separate from the oneness experience.

[01:24:17] It's just, where is our mind? And these things can beautifully emerge and become one. And so already after the first time that I did it, even though I had that really scary night, I already said, oh my God, I have to become a facilitator.

[01:24:35] Luke: You knew how?

[01:24:36] Cru: Yeah.

[01:24:37] Luke: So you had the thought that I always have, but you actually followed the lead.

[01:24:40] Cru: You know what? Every fourth person that does Bufo has that thought. So the facilitator that I did and that Philip trained under, he has done thousands of journeys. He's really only doing Bufo, and he's amazing in his facilitation.

[01:24:59] Luke: Maybe I could go train under this guy.

[01:25:00] Cru: Yeah. You have to live in Costa Rica though.

[01:25:04] Luke: I'm down. Those ideas to me are not crazy, I think.

[01:25:11] Cru: No.

[01:25:11] Luke: I could just shut this whole shit down and go do that and have the best life. But I could also just stay here and do this and have the best too.

[01:25:18] Cru: Exactly. Life will tell you what is right and when it's right. Yeah, in the beginning, I asked him, how can I become an apprentice? And then in my third journey, two months later, after the first time, I woke up and I knew I'm not a facilitator in the sense of the one that provides the medicine. I just knew it, that this is not my part.

[01:25:50] Luke: You mean actually holding up the pipe and administering the medicine.

[01:25:53] Cru: Yeah, administering the medicine. But I knew that this will become a part of my journey and the work that I'm doing. And I just knew that would enhance also my work. If I can help people, whoever is ready for it, and then go and eliminate some of that subconscious mind programming, then I have a much easier time with the work that I'm doing and it's more effective.

[01:26:26] When we bought this place in Costa Rica, it was just a villa for us. And then it turned into a retreat center just automatically with this Bufo, because then we said, okay, my mom and Lou's dad and his wife and everybody wanted to come and do Bufo because they've all seen what happened to Lou.

[01:26:46] Luke: Yeah. Did your mom end up doing it?

[01:26:47] Cru: Yeah.

[01:26:47] Luke: No way.

[01:26:48] Cru: Yeah. She did it six times already. Yes.

[01:26:51] Luke: What? You've got to be shitting me. What is her age?

[01:26:56] Cru: She is 70. Did she turn 74 this year?

[01:26:59] Luke: Wow. That is epic.

[01:27:02] Cru: Mm-hmm. Yeah. She's amazing.

[01:27:04] Luke: And even though she's a naturopath, I'm just imagining--

[01:27:08] Cru: She's also a spiritual teacher.

[01:27:10] Luke: Okay. Because I've never been to Germany, but I would say Germans on a whole aren't people that I would particularly think were into the esoteric and open to doing something like bufo. It doesn't seem like, culturally, in general.

[01:27:27] Cru: They're very down-to-earth people, but they're also very deep people.

[01:27:31] Luke: These old souls as you mentioned.

[01:27:33] Cru: Mm-hmm. Old souls. Yes.

[01:27:34] Luke: So it's not that big of a stretch to you. You weren't shocked that your mom showed an interest and went and participated in that.

[01:27:41] Cru: No. She's already gone through the same trainings as I have, then after I started these training-- we are very, very close, and we have a very spiritual experience in our family with the kids and everybody.

[01:27:56] Luke: What a blessing.

[01:27:58] Cru: Yeah, Lila is working as a healer since he's two years old, and he had his own clients, and he's doing amazing work. Lou didn't want so much, but he's actually in one of my trainings right now, and he's the rapper son.

[01:28:15] Luke: Is he doing conscious wrapping?

[01:28:18] Cru: He can't write anymore the way he was writing before, and to see him unfold is, for me, such a blessing, and he's now 21, so it's two years after his first Bufo. So eventually, it just formed in that way that everybody wanted to come and do it also.

[01:28:41] Luke: Right.

[01:28:41] Cru: My mom is done now, I think, with Bufo. Any medicine shouldn't be a medicine that you keep running to it, like I already said, but Bufo especially, that could be a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

[01:28:51] Luke: For me, yeah, if you get a solid dose, I think for many people it could be enough for multiple lifetimes. I don't know that we're even meant to experience consciousness in that-- I guess if we weren't meant to do it, it wouldn't be here and that toad wouldn't exist, but--

[01:29:11] Cru: Not yet.

[01:29:12] Luke: I don't think it's for everyone and definitely not for everyone all the time. I'm terrified of it.

[01:29:18] Cru: Yeah. And rightfully so, because it's terrifying to be everything and nothing.

[01:29:24] Luke: It's always kind of this tug of war because I know you. I know facilitators here, and one text, I could be doing it seven days a week. You know what I mean? It's just everywhere. It's not everywhere, but in certain circles. And there's a part of me that's like, yeah, I think it's time. And then there's a bigger part that's like, no, it's never time. Don't do it.

[01:29:43] Cru: I had that same thing.

[01:29:44] Luke: But I know what those two sides are. It's like my soul is going, not that it needs to happen all the time or that many times in my life, but my soul, I think feels when I'm forgetting who I am a bit. And it's like, oof, that will remind you in about three minutes.

[01:30:05] Cru: And really that's all that is often, just three minutes. But in there, it's eternity.

[01:30:11] Luke: It's an eternity. And then my ego is like, hell no. Dangerous. Do not do it. We're not letting go. It doesn't want to experience non-existence ever again. It wants to assert itself and it wants to protect me.

[01:30:26] It wants to keep me alive. It just doesn't know that I'll never be more alive than I am when I'm in touch with who I really am. And that's the funny thing about the ego. It's like a pet. It's like a kid that's there yapping, and its intentions are pure. I think about the ego like our dog, Cookie. She's gotten better because we've trained her, but if somebody knocks on the door, she barks like crazy.

[01:30:53] It's this high pitch, just annoying, disruptive bark, just really hard on the nervous system for everyone in earshot. I used to be really annoyed by it, just like I'm annoyed when my ego motivates me to do something stupid, which it does often. And then there was a certain point at which I just saw it's in her nature to try to protect our family and our home.

[01:31:20] She's actually being the perfect dog when-- not that I want to encourage her. I'm still going to train her to not do it because I'm the boss of this house, not her. And sometimes she gets that flipped and thinks that she's the boss and therefore she has to protect us. I'm protecting her ass is what's really happening.

[01:31:38] I'm bigger. I'm stronger and maybe smarter. But I started to see like, oh wow, there's a real perfection and beauty in that barking as annoying as it might be, and I had the correlation framework up here that that's the same way the ego operates. It's like it gets us into trouble. It causes us to make decisions sometimes that don't serve us and might even be deleterious to other people with whom we're in relationship. But ultimately, its intention is to serve us and to help us and protect us.

[01:32:09] Cru: Yeah, but it will be different soon. We will see that soon in my capacity, in my being here.

[01:32:18] Luke: Soon. In a few hundred years.

[01:32:19] Cru: Yeah.

[01:32:21] Luke: Which is really just this moment from a different vantage point.

[01:32:26] Cru: Exactly. Yeah, I think we will see egos become not protectors and ego become courageous individualizers. Because the ego is what individualizes us, and it is amazing. We could have never this conversation if you didn't have an ego and I didn't have one. Because then we would experience oneness and then there wouldn't be you and there wouldn't be me and there would be no need to talk about anything.

[01:32:56] Luke: Totally.

[01:32:56] Cru: Because that would be eternal bliss. So having a meal together, having sex, loving and skiing, which I love, all of those things, meeting new people all the time, when the ego is not held captive in this protector mode, because the underlying thing of all cruelty and all suffering is fear.

[01:33:26] And the ego is so enslaved by fear that it becomes this protector, constantly an alert to assess the situation and then do things in motivation to protect, but then hurting the situation even more. But really, in the end, it's all boiling down to fear is the essence of all of that. And when that fear releases and becomes more acceptance and knowing that safety is within and all of that, then the ego can become initially what it intends to be.

[01:34:09] And that is that beautiful individualization and the ability to act within this individual self with other individual selves in a dual existence. So it's a beautiful thing. It's just very held captive in fear. And that's why it acts the way it acts, and we've seen it, but it had to happen that way. We would have not been able to experience all of totality, also the shadow sides, if we hadn't-- if we remember all the time that we're blissed, do you think we're going anywhere? We're not. So we had to have this.

[01:34:54] Luke: Yeah. It's like the ego causes these situations in which we experience suffering and it's doing it in order to provide us protection, but unknowingly harms us, but that harm motivates us to seek something beyond it. And then we come back around and kind of pat it on the head and go, we're safe.

[01:35:20] You can just chill. Help me be an individual persona because I need to be a Luke Storey. That's what I'm doing here. So I need you ego to help me have the mannerisms and personality and motivations and all the things that the ego does, but it's like that right relationship with Cookie. It's like the training for her is not to try to eliminate her or extinguish her light or her instincts. It's that she needs to be trained that she's doesn't need to be in charge.

[01:35:54] Cru: She doesn't need to be responsible.

[01:35:56] Luke: There's an adult in the room, so you don't need to freak out and bark, just like my ego doesn't need to be defensive on Twitter when someone insults me or whatever.

[01:36:04] Cru: Yes, yes, of course.

[01:36:05] Luke: It's the same exact shit that we do unknowingly, unconsciously at the behest of the ego because we just don't have that awareness. So as we become more secure within ourselves and we lose ultimately what is the fear of death, if you trace all of our fears to the end point, it's the demise of the physical body. So if we can, which Bufo is great for fast forwarding to that and going, oh, there actually is no such thing as death. It's a falsehood. It's actually a mirage.

[01:36:38] Cru: It's actually beautiful.

[01:36:40] Luke: Right.

[01:36:40] Cru: Yes, because if there is no death, there is no life. We experience death every single millisecond that we think that exists, because time really doesn't exist, but if we think of time, every single millisecond, or even more often, we die all the time and resurrect.

[01:37:01] Because we cannot sustain-- it's like a tree. A tree does fall its leaves unless it's a not falling leaves tree. You know what I mean? But the tree naturally instinctively knows to let go and to be in a life cycle and then retreat also in the winter. It almost looks like it dies, but it's not dying.

[01:37:27] It's actually just retreated and the work is happening in the roots. And then the next spring, it comes brings forth life. And this is now we look at this in a year cycle at a tree, or I don't know how often that happens, and maybe some trees do that twice a year, but we do this with ourselves just the cells alone all the time. They're dying and they're resurrecting, and they're dying and they're resurrecting.

[01:37:53] There is no life without death, and there is no death without life. So these things are the same. And the more we embrace this eternal life principle, the more we understand that death is just part of sustaining us through that eternity. Because we really don't. It's just form that is changing.

[01:38:18] And we will eventually. You and I, we don't have to die anymore. If we choose to keep this body alive, we can be 1,000 years if we want to. It's a matter of consciousness. It's a matter of mind over matter. And then all these amazing things that we have today, quantum fields, all sorts of plans, rediscoveries of what supports stem cells release in the body, like stem cell therapy, we can regrow an organ by now if we have the funds, from our own stem cells.

[01:38:53] And so this is just the beginning. We are moving towards unification. So we will see more and more and more of that stuff arising and neither you nor I have to choose to let go of this body if we like it enough and take good care of all parts of ourselves. And we don't have to let that physical decay that eventually leads to death-- C60 is a super good example. Its cells start picking up the telomeres again and producing their full length. That is the end of life when the cell stops reproducing in an appropriate length that it can keep existing or sustain the body to be alive.

[01:39:42] Now that the cell does that again, that is what we do the first 20 years of our life. Of course, when we can do this 20 years of our life, we can do this longer. In this game here, we have accepted certain rules. Because if we're eternal beings going through these lives without dying and then coming back with no memory, then what's the whole point of going anywhere?

[01:40:12] We're in bliss. We can just stay where we came from. This was part of the rules. It's like playing monopoly. You accept the rules. And you're not playing hotel rules when you're playing monopoly. So you come here and be part of this whole experience in this creation cycle and there are certain rules, and one of the rules was we die.

[01:40:35] Because that's the way we were able to forget and then restart and do over and have a karmic experience, which we haven't done until 2012. And now we're not tied to karma anymore. We're completely free. The whole board of rules is wiped clean. And we have yet to find the ways to move with a little bit more mainstream, towards unification, but we have also so much time.

[01:41:06] Now it already happened and started over again. But it's a beautiful thing to see now how many things are already there that can support this. So when we don't have these implants anymore that tell us you have to die, you have to let your cell do what it has done now, all of that way of separation, and it can just sustain itself, I'm sure that in a few years, maybe 20 years or so, we will have the ability to do things physically even.

[01:41:47] We have so much mind over matter that we have so much choice in how we want our physical reality, not the mainstream, but people that have gotten so much awareness and train these abilities. All of that can be trained. We can already do so many things. We have been able to do so many things for hundreds of years.

[01:42:13] Now we see how the world has accelerated in its evolution in the last 10 alone. And so it will become even more so like that. But the more we embrace death as part of life and something that happens anyway, all the time and never really is a final end, the less fear we have of dying and proving our point and position and making it all happen now, because who knows if there's tomorrow.

[01:42:43] Well, I believe in now a lot, but it doesn't have to be like that. It can just be naturally what it is now, because there will be so many nows. There will be forever nows. Somebody like me that has all their memory of future past and present in this moment, I can tell you there's just no end, which could also lead to despair.

[01:43:11] Luke: There's no end.

[01:43:12] Cru: There's no getting out of this.

[01:43:13] Luke: It depends on what your experience is in a given moment.

[01:43:16] Cru: Oh man, I can tell you it was not always just fun. But now, even when the things are-- one of my most precious teachings that I hold close to my own experience too is find joy in everything. Also in the suffering, understand that it's just a momentary thing. And surrender to it, but find joy in it. Smile at it.

[01:43:45] And that's not always easy. That is a very advanced practice, but everybody can practice it. It's just reminding yourself over and over again, and maybe sometimes just smile at the storm. And then it's half the storm because our fear tends to build things up tremendously. And when we smile or find joy in something, then the suffering is not so great anymore and the fear is not so great anymore.

[01:44:13] And then the ego doesn't have so much need to protect and do all sorts of stupid things that then lead to more stupidity and crazy situations. But yeah, finding joy in everything, not judging something negative as something negative anymore, and it is what it is.

[01:44:32] Acceptance is the first step into understanding what it means to self-love or to love in general. And then everything becomes so much easier. Then there's still woodchopping. I got this book once from Philip, I don't know, 18 years ago. In the back it said woodchopping before enlightenment and woodchopping after enlightenment.

[01:44:59] And that is so true. If one thing that I have learned in all of this is that in the end, life is there to live it. Wood chopping is part of it. It is just coming from a different place when you chop it. You can chop it and feel like, oh shit, why do I have to do this? It's terrible. It hurts. I've never chopped wood, so I don't know if it hurts.

[01:45:23] Luke: For me, it would be raking the leaves out of the pool.

[01:45:26] Cru: Oh, yeah.

[01:45:27] Luke: I'm super OCD about the pool. I don't like leaves in there because that means they got to pour more chemicals because it turns green because there's fuel for the critters to live on. Actually, I was doing it today and I thought, I don't like paddleboarding at all, but I thought, this is what people get out of paddleboarding. It's a cool exercise, just feeling the resistance of the water. And then that led me like, wow, how could I ever complain about this? I have a freaking pool.

[01:46:00] Cru: Not even that, you don't even put it in context to having or not having, but just being in that moment and doing whatever this moment asks from you and finding joy in it. It's like sometimes we have to do things that don't joy us so much, but then finding joy in them is bringing so much zen to our life. Zen is maybe calm for people that don't know what that means. Zen brings calm and peace into that moment.

[01:46:31] Luke: I'll be damned. All right, we did it. What I want to ask you, I want to remind people, show notes at lukestorey.com/cru, C-R-U. Last question for you and then we'll get out of here. Who have been three teachers or teachings that you'd like to share with us that have impacted your life?

[01:46:53] Cru: Life. Life was my biggest teacher. And devotion was also a great teacher, like a disease really, and to surrender to that and devote myself to moving within the teaching. And so it's not really people. There were people in my life. They have guided me, like my teacher that gave me my name.

[01:47:33] The teachings that I have that have helped me find myself, they are not appropriate. I don't want to say it that way, but we have a different time now. You can become your own teacher. We don't need to look to the outside world anymore to these things that we have created in order for us to find God in other things like religion.

[01:47:57] One of my greatest teachers was Jesus, but not the Jesus that is the Jesus from the church, the Jesus that I actually got to know when he was here. His teachings were very different than the ones that we are being told that his teachings are.

[01:48:20] But this Jesus frequency is still there and we can connect to that all the time. We just have to close our eyes and go into our hearts and just let that happen, that connection. It automatically happens with practice. And then you can have that as your teacher. And if you need to find teachers inside of you or Ganesh, who's an amazing teacher-- I love Hanuman.

[01:48:48] To me, the world is not on personas on. It's many, many things, but we can all access that. And then there is the greatest teacher that is your heart. And there is your right person somewhere out there that can help you understand yourself.

[01:49:07] And all of them are great. If that's the person that you happen to come upon and maybe they cannot take you, I have to say that not one person in any of my lifetimes that I had as a human being-- had I had one teacher and that made me go all the way, I have come to a point with people where they couldn't do anything for me anymore.

[01:49:30] And then I moved on to the next person. So don't get stuck in one thing. Allow yourself to evolve and allow others not to be less good just because they can't guide you any further. They took you into their realm and you did everything in their realm and then find the next thing where you can unfold you.

[01:49:54] The greatest teacher that today exists is within you and within your heart and to foster that and to nourish that connection that I think is the teacher of the future. And then ask your children because your children are also amazing teachers, because they know shit that we have forgotten or that we don't remember to pay attention to. And so let the little voices become a little louder because they're really smart voices. So those are the teachers that I would recommend in the world.

[01:50:32] Luke: Beautiful. Thanks for making the time to join me today.

[01:50:36] Cru: Thank you for having me.