[00:00:01] Alyson: Hello, Luke Carlson Storey. Welcome to your show, the Life Stylist.

[00:00:06] Luke: Episode 637.

[00:00:09] Alyson: And I wanted to begin by congratulating you. Quite the momentous occasion. After years in total, if you can figure in the proposal and other aspects of your book journey, after years of working on it, you have officially turned in.

[00:00:33] Luke: I turned in the first draft of the manuscript.

[00:00:38] Alyson: So essentially--

[00:00:40] Luke: Which is like the 10th draft of the book.

[00:00:42] Alyson: Right.

[00:00:44] Luke: For me.

[00:00:45] Alyson: And for those new or unaware of the book world, you've gotten your book "completed" in one sense. Yes, it's going to your editor and your publisher, and they're going to do edits, and you're going to tweak, and you have to design the cover. There's lots of steps to go. However, you've written the book.

[00:01:07] Luke: The bulk of it is done.

[00:01:09] Alyson: Oh my good lord.

[00:01:11] Luke: I have never, ever worked so hard on something, especially for that long in my entire life. And I've put in some work.

[00:01:23] Alyson: Yeah, you're a hard worker. You definitely have that ingrained in your constitution and your character. When you got to put your nose to the grindstone, I think, as they say, you do it. And yet I also have never witnessed you work harder on anything before. And it requires such discipline.

[00:01:47] And you did it day in, day out, oftentimes seven days a week for months and months and months and months on end. We were talking the other day, like, if you had logged hours-- we never did the math, but if, yeah, you multiplied the average hours per day, times, days, weeks, months--

[00:02:06] Luke: If I was getting paid by the hour, it would probably be five cents an hour.

[00:02:11] Alyson: Yeah. Well, that's the interesting thing.

[00:02:13] Luke: I'm not in the book writing game to make money anyway, but it did occur to me at many times. I thought, wow, if all of this time and energy was going into something else, I wonder what that would look like. I feel like I could have launched three companies or who knows what. But thank you for your patience throughout the process, because there wasn't a lot of husband available, especially in this last stretch.

[00:02:44] So I really appreciate your patience and resisting coming in my office. I'm sure you wanted to come in many more times than you did, so I appreciate your understanding. And thankfully you wrote your own book. For those listening, Alyson has an incredible book and card deck called Animal Power. And when we became a couple and she moved in to my house in Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles, she was at the beginning of drafting her book. And so I--

[00:03:16] Alyson: The weekend I moved in was the same weekend I got my book deal and signed the contract. The very same weekend.

[00:03:23] Luke: Yeah. So I got to see what that's like from the other side. But for anyone that's written a book, I'm sure it's a very personal and unique experience for everyone that does it. But it helped me to see what you went through and that it's-- if you want to write it yourself and not work with a ghost writer or something, if you're actually writing it, I saw the level of commitment that was required watching you do it.

[00:03:52] So it was good for me to know that going in, but also good for you to know like, where is this guy? I'm literally just in my office for hours and hours and hours every single day for months getting into it.

[00:04:07] Alyson: That's what I said a number of times. I was so grateful that I am also an author and I have gone through it, because we'll never know, I'll never know what it would've felt like had I not gone through it myself. But I would guess it would've been more challenging. Maybe. Maybe not.

[00:04:31] But yeah, thank you for thanking me. You're welcome. It was an honor. And yeah, for a very, very significantly long amount of time, I needed to be totally fine with our dynamic being very different. I get it, and I got it. And I'm sure I'll write more books and more decks, and you'll need to return the favor again to me and so forth. But yeah, different things that would normally have more involvement or placement within a marriage, there was no space for some of those things, like more romantic whatever.

[00:05:21] Luke: Not a lot of date nights happening.

[00:05:22] Alyson: Yeah. And even when there was also some, not buffering-- that's not the right word to use-- but gatekeeping a little bit, like when we'd get invited a lot to a lot of things, I've had to explain countless times, like, it's a no. It's a no go. And yes, of course, I went to things on my own quite a lot.

[00:05:48] While you were writing, I would go to our friend gatherings, and after a number of months, our friend group got very accustomed. In the beginning they would, "Where's Luke? Where's Luke? Where's Luke?" And then after, I don't know how many months in, they would ask how you're doing.

[00:06:03] But it became a given that they would know that you were in the office writing while I was at the potluck or the ceremony or whatever. But yeah, I had to just let people know, like, look, invites are just really off the table. If you're wanting us as a marital unit to join or him, it's not happening.

[00:06:25] Luke: That's one of the greatest ironies was, is-- I have to remind myself you're not done. You got a break for a few weeks while it gets looked over. But writing about loneliness and connection--

[00:06:46] Alyson: That's so funny. You were by yourself in your office [Inaudible].

[00:06:49] Luke: And I think at one point I wrote in the book that it's not lost on me that I'm writing a book about loneliness and writing is in and of itself, even if you are chatting with editors or I take breaks and come hang out with you, I guess it depends on the nature of the book.

[00:07:04] This one was so deeply personal and went to places that were not that comfortable. So the writing process is very solitary, but also because of what I was writing about, it's like I have to be able to be objective and get the message I'm trying to convey into the book without getting too lost in the feelings and the stories.

[00:07:38] Because I'm talking about trauma and addiction and different things from my life as they pertain to connection. So it's like I'm doing this really deep shadow work by myself that I can't really explain to other people because I need to keep my eye on the ball. You know what I mean? I can't let go into these processes with other people. So I'm doing the work as I'm writing.

[00:07:59] And also, very few people, unless they're a full-time author that writes themselves and doesn't outsource it really understand what it takes. And that was frustrating at times because my friends, God bless them, will be like, "Dude, what's up? Aren't you done yet? Can't you come hang, go to lunch?"

[00:08:27] I'm like, "Dude, there's no lunches. You don't get it, the amount of focus. I think that's the thing. I've never done anything where I can't ever really turn it off. It's like every day when I wake up, boom, the book is in my mind.

[00:08:46] It's in my dreams. It infiltrated my entire being because due to the nature of the content and the themes and things like that, it requires a full immersion. I don't know, it's not writing about something that's more--

[00:09:05] Alyson: I love cookbooks, but I always reference cookbooks. You're not taking pictures of brownies in the kitchen island.

[00:09:12] Luke: Yeah. And it's not a self-help book in the sense of like the five easy steps to be your best self. It's not really a lighthearted blueprint book. It's pretty deep.

[00:09:26] Alyson: The other thing too, it's tales and teachings. And the one thing that I learned very quickly upon writing animal power was that if you are an integrity filled guide, practitioner, teacher, there's nothing that you can write about in the book that you can't also be in full embodiment with.

[00:09:56] If you're writing a teaching, and if you're sharing something about a long standing tradition or a component of that, deep shadow work awareness that got extracted from one of your traumas, you have to be the living embodiment of what you are imparting onto the pages and words. And so authors who do walk the path in this way, you go through a lot of initiations as you're writing the book.

[00:10:28] Luke: So hardcore. Yeah. The way I've looked at it is it's like writing from a place more so than writing about a place or a thing, if that makes sense. So it's like I'm fully immersed in whatever I happened to be writing about. And the tricky thing about that is some of the things that were difficult to face, not that I haven't faced them or looked at them, but I don't know, you work on things for some time and then, I think in a healthy way, they become compartmentalized.

[00:11:04] I'm not going to sit around every day thinking about trauma and all this. But then time would go by and then I'd have [Inaudible] to do different pieces of editing, and then I'd like be back in that loop again. I'm like, "Oh God, I got to go back to Chapter 2. That one's gnarly." So it's refacing those things over and over again.

[00:11:29] So by default, I think I was very much in the experience that I was writing about in a very personal and vulnerable way. And probably would've been easier on that front had my dad not died when I was literally halfway done with the book or a little over halfway.

[00:11:48] Because, of course, I needed some time to go through the grieving process. And so when I picked back up again, a lot of the older writing was not as good as I would've hoped because I improved as I went. Some of it's two years old. And then I went back to the beginning to do my edits. I'm like, "Who wrote this crap?"

[00:12:10] Alyson: That's the thing too. My book has been out for-- oh my gosh, I really should know this. I'm forgiving myself because I'm just coming out of the three-year cave period.

[00:12:20] Luke: We moved here in February, 2021.

[00:12:25] Alyson: So it's been out for four years.

[00:12:27] Luke: Yeah.

[00:12:27] Alyson: Okay, thanks. Thankfully, it's not a lot of things in Animal Power book, but I have come across a couple of things here and there where even in the four years since it's been published, I would write certain things a different way. I've evolved so much over the last four years. I'm a completely different person.

[00:12:50] I still love the book wholeheartedly, and I still stand in alignment with it. However, in the animal medicine messages where the animal is talking and giving you tips or things to do, there's certain ways that I would maybe write some of those differently now, where I'm like, "Oh."

[00:13:13] My thoughts about the moon. I'm like, "I don't know if I'm as into the moon now as I was when I was writing it. And so there's different rituals with certain animals you work with on the full moon or whatever. And I don't know if I would do that. So anyways.

[00:13:28] But one thing that pinged in when you were just talking about your last point was we also celebrated our wedding anniversary on the same day this month that you turned in your first draft of your manuscript. So again, it's so uncanny though, the timing. Also when we were in Nevada City, the day that you were writing about-- it was your dad's birthday the day--

[00:13:54] Luke: Yeah, I came to the conclusion, the final chapter. I guess I had a rough outline in mind, but I didn't really know what I was going to write. And then it just made the most sense because dad died in the middle of the book, and there's a lot of content about him in present tense.

[00:14:14] So I thought I would at least, without getting too heavy at the end of a book that's already pretty heavy at points, just give my dad a mention and just share how I was trying to experience connection with him while he's not in a body, that kind of thing. So I opened with that, and as I was writing it, I realized that it was his birthday.

[00:14:35] Alyson: So yeah, there was that. And then technically you "should have" turned in this first draft manuscript a little while ago. You got a little leeway for the grieving process and then you asked for a couple of days extension. But through all of that, it ended up being turned in on the same day as our wedding anniversary.

[00:14:56] And I was laughing because we went to dinner that night to have a little date night and celebrate our anniversary, and I didn't say anything to you at the time, but it was so funny to me that we were having our own date night.

[00:15:17] And because you had just turned the book in, I'm sure it was maybe on your conscious a little bit. You were like, "Oh, yeah, I did want to let you know that in the book, I talked about A, B, and C." I don't know if you want me to give it away, but the--

[00:15:34] Luke: Probably not.

[00:15:35] Alyson: Okay. It was pretty graphic subject matter. I don't know. I don't know if irony is the right thing, hilarity. But you know what I'm saying? We're on our own date night, celebrating our anniversary, and you're like, "Oh, by the way, sweetie, you should probably know that I'm divulging this story, this story, and this story in the book. Won't give it away, but very graphic in nature, very sexual in nature.

[00:16:02] And so on our anniversary date night, you're telling me these stories. I thought I'd pretty much known everything. And I was not surprised by these stories because of other stories I've known, but still it was, some of it was new, and I was curious about some of the details. So I just thought it was hilarious that we were talking about that on our date night.

[00:16:21] Luke: That's funny. I didn't even put that together.

[00:16:24] Alyson: I know you didn't.

[00:16:24] Luke: I was so absorbed in my process, but I can see your point.

[00:16:30] Alyson: Just like, you know what I mean?

[00:16:34] Luke: Yeah, yeah. Wouldn't have been the best decorum had I not.

[00:16:39] Alyson: [Inaudible] most romantic.

[00:16:41] Luke: Yeah. A funny thing about November 8th also is that it's the anniversary of the founding of my first real company, schoolofstyle.com. And that was the day I held my first class, in 2008, and then ran with that business for 10 years, and then ended up selling it last year. But yeah, that date seems to be a special one.

[00:17:06] Alyson: Yeah. It's got some supercharged electrified potency. I know there were a couple people that purchased it from you, but Law Roach he's a huge stylist. He is now, I don't know his correct title, co-owner of that or whatever.

[00:17:29] Luke: It's really cool to see the legacy of something carry on in an even better way than I could have ever done or cared to do.

[00:17:39] Alyson: Yeah, it got revitalized.

[00:17:41] Luke: Yeah, it's a blessing. You work on something for a really long time, it's, I don't know. It hasn't happened for me because I've not built a bunch of companies. I'm not one of those serial entrepreneur guys.

[00:18:03] But I imagine it's a bummer if you put a lot of time and energy into something for a number of years and then for whatever reason you just want to move on, and you just have to let it die on the vine and just evaporate. That'd be a bummer. So yeah, it feels good to be able to-- I get their emails and stuff just to see that they're successful. Feels really good.

[00:18:17] Alyson: Yeah. So congratulations.

[00:18:20] Luke: Thank you, dear. I'll accept it. I'll take it. I appreciate it.

[00:18:24] Alyson: My last question on this before we switch gears is, what are you going to do with all this newfound space in time, at least for a little bit?

[00:18:33] Luke: That's what's crazy. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to adjust to that-- not frantic, but just all day, every day, got to be in the office kind of thing. But I felt like when we went out for dinner that night-- I ate like four entrees. I was--

[00:18:54] Alyson: You were wolfing.

[00:18:55] Luke: I was living my best life, and I realized I'm actually okay with not being productive. But I've caught myself a few times just feeling like I need to be in there, getting work done and--

[00:19:07] Alyson: The aftershocks.

[00:19:08] Luke: Yeah. Doing my best to give myself a little bit of space. Obviously, this whole time I've been doing the podcast and everything else that I do. So it's not like there's nothing to do now, but the schedule's definitely a lot lighter.

[00:19:22] Alyson: Okay.

[00:19:23] Luke: Yeah. So I'm learning how to adjust and give myself a little space.

[00:19:28] Alyson: Not that this next topic ever ceases for either one of us, but perhaps now that you've got some more space time and energy, you can devote it to this quote that pinged in when we were cruising around town. I think we were going to the local trail over here to walk Cookie one day.

[00:19:54] I'll get these sudden downloads, epiphanies, revelations, and the one that came to me was-- it downloaded in. It dropped in. Then I said, "What do you think about this concept? Does it make sense to you?" And it was. It can all boil down to how willing you are to be a student of life. And you were like, "Yeah, yeah, that resonates. That makes sense."

[00:20:31] And then you did a couple of add-ons. You were like, "What if you say it can all boil down to how willing you are to be a student of life or it's victim, or the question, are you a student of life or at the mercy of life?" And so with a lot of these themes when you and I do these discussions, I don't have a full breakdown, of, I want to say this. You're going to say this. But I want to open up this concept to just unpack it a little bit, of it can all boil down to how willing you are to be a student of life. True or false?

[00:21:06] Luke: To get that is the key to everlasting peace. It's about perception. And I think everything, at least for me-- my degree of ease, joy, any of that is directly proportional to how I am choosing to view reality, life as it unfolds. And oftentimes I'm sure I'm not even choosing.

[00:21:44] And those are the times when it doesn't feel very good, because I'm just letting the inertia of my past or addictive emotions or thought patterns lead and create meaning out of life. But the only way I can imagine getting through this human experience, this Earth school virtual reality, weird-ass game that we're in is surrendering to the idea that, a, I chose it, and b, if it's ever difficult, it's because I'm holding it in a way that's making it more difficult.

[00:22:26] Alyson: Yeah.

[00:22:28] Luke: I think the one thing that's a really useful tool that's helped me is really paying attention to my past. And I've had, as you know, a pretty checkered one.

[00:22:42] Alyson: It's a large checkerboard.

[00:22:43] Luke: Yeah. I've gone to some dark places in life when I was a kid, just as a survival instinct or a reaction to things that I experienced with addiction and all those things. But when I look back on just about-- oh, well, there's a couple of things that are pretty tough.

[00:23:02] When you're legitimately victimized, it's difficult to find the lesson in it. But if I'm honest, most of the difficult situations I found myself in were of my own making. So taking responsibility for every thought, feeling, action, every decision, every choice that I've ever made has been incredibly liberating.

[00:23:26] But also looking back and seeing the lessons or seeing the value in things that at the time seemed like a curse or the worst thing that could ever happen. So I can go back to these major touch points in life and see, oh, okay, I see why that happened. Boom, it pivoted me into more growth. Or I met this person because this person was gone, on and on and on.

[00:23:50] I think we can all have those honest analysis of our life experiences, the big hits. And what's cool about that is not just reconciling the past. But where there's a lot of value in that for me is I've built the habit and continue to build the habit of being able to open my mind and open my perspective in the moment that I think really sucks.

[00:24:18] Alyson: Yes. And that's so helpful, when you can in more in real time, see the glimmers or very clearly extract, like, "Ooh, I totally see what's going on here." Boy, is that supportive, when something is uncomfortable.

[00:24:31] Luke: Yeah. If I don't get my way, I have something planned. I'm waiting on a delivery, and then I want to go do this thing. Or trying to take a trip and the dates conflict, or whatever. My dad dying. It can be little things, big things. But it's like when I witnessed the mind starting to judge that as a negative outcome, over the years I've gotten faster at like nipping that. Like, "Uh, uh, uh, nice try. We're not going to judge this because we don't know the whole story yet." And I'm waiting for the story to unfold.

[00:25:05] So it's a practice of micro surrenders all the time of my expectations, my attachments. It's just like letting go, letting go, letting go constantly. But what makes that easier is looking at the past, when I can go, "Dude, I can name 100 times when I thought it was the end of my life, the worst thing that could ever happen."

[00:25:29] And then some time goes by and in hindsight you get the wisdom to see it happened for a reason, as corny as that sounds. So in the day-to-day life right now, I'm pretty good at pivoting when things change. I'm pretty adaptable to shit going haywire because I just know that I don't know what it means. Who am I to say how God ordered the universe? I don't know what's going on.

[00:25:56] Alyson: And it's helpful for me to remind myself. I really do believe in soul contracts, and I really have a pretty vivid recollection of tuning in by myself and also sitting with some of my colleagues, guides, ascended masters before I came in this lifetime devising some plans.

[00:26:19] And so that's helpful for me to remember too. And sometimes when people ask me about my path to knowing I'm an Oracle or embarking on the shamanic path, it's like, well, do you want the grand scale answer that it was always a part of the plan, or do you want to know when the veil lifted for me once I incarnated?

[00:26:432] Because there is always that biggest picture, biggest zoom out sole contract aspect of it as well. I have a lot more I want to say about this, but I'm noticing you're deflating a bit, so I just wanted you aware you're really going down in size here.

[00:27:00] Luke: Oh, that happens sometimes. Yeah, it's normal. No need for alarm

[00:27:05] Alyson: Okay, because you're--

[00:27:08] Luke: I'm absorbing.

[00:27:10] Alyson: Okay. Got it. For those who are curious what we're talking about, you'll have to tune into the video, I guess. So yeah, along with this student of life thing, the other thing I like about phrasing it this way is I think that humility is a really important part of the path for those of us who-- whatever you want to call it, the hero's journey, the path of evolution, the devotion to raising your consciousness, self-awareness.

[00:27:46] There's a lot that comes with it. It's definitely not for the faint of heart. And if you just always remember that you're a willing student of life, I think that it helps to keep things in check, whether it's pride, ego. Because I think having humility and remaining pretty humbled is an important part.

[00:28:16] I also am a huge believer in also celebrating your greatness too. Just yesterday I went into your office and I was just, like, "Oh my gosh." I've never been more excited to be me. And I was getting some things. I was like, "I finally get this, and I get that."

[00:28:36] And I've never been more excited to be me. I'm really amazing. And I think it's really important that when those waves and those energetics and that energy medicine is arriving to you, you should not cut that off. You should not disconnect or suppress from it. I'm so glad I caught that wave that was happening and I really absorbed it in and got it into more embodiment.

[00:29:02] Because it's been long in the works to land with it in that way. It was a very unique texture of that self-honoring. So I think that's just as important. Especially if you're a spiritual guide or teacher, you have to keep humility in the fabric somehow, some way.

[00:29:24] Luke: Yeah. There's a massive emphasis on humility in the 12-step teaching. And I love the way they/Bill Wilson, the guy who wrote the literature, at least for the main program-- the beverage program as some call it. He talks about humility as having a realistic and accurate appraisal of yourself, an honest appraisal of yourself and staying right sized.

[00:29:59] And why I think that's super cool, and to your point of going, wow, I'm awesome, is, I always and still sometimes probably thought of humility as, oh, someone who's just very modest and isn't a show-off and not arrogant and grandiose and doesn't drink their own Kool-Aid and think they're the shit.

[00:30:22] But the way that teaching approaches humility is that false humility is feeling inferior. I think many of us think, oh, it's a great attribute or quality that I would like to work on, is to be more humble. But the ego oscillates between one of two sides, either superiority, and that's what we think of as someone who's really egotistical or arrogant and not humble.

[00:31:02] But then the other side is inferior. And that's the side I have to work on more. It's pretty easy for me to see if I think I'm superior. I'm judging people or something. It grosses me out. So I'm pretty good at spotting that, and it's not really something I do a lot these days. Had to work on that.

[00:31:24] But I still have a hard time accessing what you were accessing yesterday of just looking myself in the mirror and just an honest appraisal, like, you're really good at this thing, this thing, and this thing. And you have these amazing qualities. To celebrate them and to not play small.

[00:31:41] To not hide and express the parts of myself that are authentic and wonderful. That's the side that I find with humility that I have to work on more, is just advocating for myself, being assertive, having self-respect, having boundaries. Those are all, to me, aspects of humility that are in a way, at least for me, harder to work on than not getting too full of myself.

[00:32:15] Alyson: Maybe that-- tell me if this resonates-- one or a few of those younger parts of you that when you were five or 11 and you just, due to things that happened to you, got separated from that embodiment of, I don't know, self-appreciation or something. And so it's like I just got a waft or a glimmer of it's like those younger parts that still come in a little bit more to the driver's seat.

[00:32:58] And I've been doing parts work for a long time, and so with some of those that have been in place, some of those parts that have been in place since you were a newborn or a really young child, it's like when they start to do their thing, sometimes still, even at almost 47 and you're now 55, it can take, I don't know, a day or an hour or a week to be like, oh, wait, to see through the fog a little bit. It's like that was back when I was five weeks old. Let's reorient, reconstitute the parts positions here.

[00:33:41] Luke: The programming is deep, man. It's difficult to overcome. And going back to your axiom of seeing life as a teacher or seeing yourself as a victim, there's a few ways we phrase that, but it's like I could look at the things that I experienced early in life that destroyed my self-esteem or my capacity to build self-esteem in a healthy sense, a balanced self-esteem authentically, not an egoic inflation.

[00:34:21] But the gift in that is that I get to, and I've had the opportunity to learn how to cultivate that within myself. And had those things not happened and I had just super perfect parents and ancestors and the family line, and everyone's like, "Go team, you can do it. Then, I don't know.

[00:34:41] It would've just been onboard, and I wouldn't have had the opportunity to learn how to do that for myself. It's like I'm learning in real time, witnessing you. This is something you're really strong in. I feel yesterday you going like, "Man, I was tripping. I'm awesome." In a very grounded way.

[00:34:58] Alyson: Yeah, yeah.

[00:34:59] Luke: And so you come in there and you're telling me that, I'm like, "Duh, I see you like this 24/7." There's literally nothing you could do that would prevent me from seeing you that way, even when you have your imperfect moments or you're going through whatever you're going through.

[00:35:16] The beautiful lesson I think for me is when I look at you with a complete absence of judgment, and I just truly love you unconditionally, every part of you, every expression of you, and I just see how amazing you are, it's really easy for me to see that in you. Much more difficult to see it in myself. So sometimes what I do is I imagine how I see you and I try to apply it to myself.

[00:35:49] Alyson: Try that on. Yeah.

[00:35:50] Luke: When I was writing the book, often after I'd meditate, I don't know if you ever heard me in the bedroom doing this, but I'd get up and I'd be like, "You can do this, Luke. You're fucking doing great, buddy. Keep going." I'd be talking to myself because it's like the guy that just came out of meditation is overwhelmed or going, "I don't know if I'm cut out for this. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. No one's going to like it. My editor's going to hate it."

[00:36:12] Alyson: You'll randomly walk around the house, though and be like, "I'm awesome." You say that quite--

[00:36:17] Luke: I'm working on it. But one really powerful tool for me is to just imagine how I see you, but also transposing myself into your perspective of how you see me. Because I know you love me in all of my messiness and imperfection and amazingness and all the things.

[00:36:37] You're not looking at me like, I love this part, but not that part. And if he was a little more like this, I could love him more. It's just full, we blew the dam. The river of love is flowing 100%. There's nothing blocking it. And so those are some of the things I do to practice that myself.

[00:36:58] Alyson: I didn't intend on going in this little trajectory, but I think it fits. So let's try it out. It's something that I brought up to you a while ago, but I didn't necessarily plan on talking about it today. But what do you think about the concept then of-- okay, bear with me-- when there's been a life experience where there has legitimately been abuse.

[00:37:33] So there's been an abuser. There's some situations where that's just a fact. I don't know that one could debate. I think in some situations there's been abuse and there's been an abuser. Or someone has been grossly negligent and caused harm.

[00:37:52] And again, that could be like a verified fact, like that happened. And then you can choose to be a victim to those circumstances, and maybe you end up living a life of hardship. And again, I see big picture in things. Maybe that's just what the person signed up for when they incarnated. I'm not good, bad, right, wrong judging. I'm just saying that's a choice.

[00:38:24] And then there's also the choice to lean into the sometimes wild, scary terrain and discomfort that can sometimes-- when you've really been abused for years and years and years on end, then when you start to get on the healing and unpacking things, the discomfort and the revelations sometimes go on for equal amount of years. If not-- I think some therapists say that if you were abused for seven years, it will take you 14 to fully heal from it.

[00:38:57] Luke: Oh, geez.

[00:38:59] Alyson: Yeah. But what I'm getting to then is, for those people who choose the path of alchemy, the path of the hero's journey to choose to be a student of life, not a victim to it, and then you're able to rise, be the phoenix rising, you're able to create alchemy, become a wizard of alchemy, you're able to extract real treasures from the abuse or the harm done to you, and you become an incredible author.

[00:39:41] You become a spiritual guide. You become someone who is a caring, kind, helpful human in the world. I have this little, I don't want to even call it a schism. I just have this like curiosity that I want you to talk through with me of like, I don't want the abuser or the gross negligence harmer to then get credit for the person you've become, the person I've become.

[00:40:12] And I don't think that all abusers and harmers, if that's even a word, I don't think that all harmers, all perpetrators would have that mindset. However, I know some would because some are so narcissistic or ego-driven that when they see you rise from the ashes and glean all of this wisdom from what they "did to you," I guarantee there's at least some of those abusers out there that would be like, "See. It wasn't even that bad." Look who they've become.

[00:40:50] Or find all these ways to make it not just okay that they did what they did, but that they did you a fucking favor. And so want to get your thoughts on that because I've gone through a lot of stuff, like we all have, and different forms of abuse for very long periods of time has been one of them.

[00:41:14] And it's like I have this thing in me where I'm like, "Oh, hell no. You do not get credit for the devotion and commitment and vows and relentless work that I've put in for years and years to heal and overcome from what happened through the vehicle of that relationship, whatever. You don't get credit for the woman I've become and the wisdom I gleaned from that." What's your take?

[00:41:42] Luke: Yeah, I get it. Going back to my life experience, there have been very few situations in which I was legitimately an innocent victim, as I was saying earlier. So most of the things that have been tragic in my life have been based on my own stupidity or selfishness, or whatever.

[00:42:12] So leaving aside the ones that I caused in one way or another brought into my experience, the inexcusable and the unforgivable and the true cases of victimization are of course the hardest ones to reconcile. And for me, specific to your question, say one of my perpetrators reads my book someday and is like, "Wow. I felt bad about this, but this guy's awesome. He's helping a lot of people, and he is a force for good in the world."

[00:42:52] Alyson: Must not have hurt him that much.

[00:42:54] Luke: Yeah, that kind of thing. Honestly, whatever they or anyone think or feel is just none of my business. I don't care what they do with it. If someone wanted to become famous by being the catalyst for my or anyone else's suffering and growth that came from that suffering, it's just none of my business what they think and how they want to hold it.

[00:43:29] And I think for me it would be some element of pride that, no, this shit is mine. I'm taking ownership of the courage and determination, and just the grit that it took me to transmute this experience into something positive. If I put myself in that, like what would it be in me that was bothered by that? It would be pride or my wanting to take ownership of that.

[00:44:02] Whatever they think about it is none of my business. And also, there's a stretch, and I'm not victim shaming myself or anyone else that's been traumatized or abused by any stretch because we each have our own way of looking at it. But forgiveness, I think, has been one way that makes it pretty easy for me to not be bothered by whoever is doing whatever, taking credit or feeling like they got off the hook, because karma takes care of itself.

[00:44:38] It's like I don't have to punish or want to withhold any joy or success from anyone that's hurt me. It's like the dualistic realm that we live in and the karmic cycles that we live through and incarnations, shit takes care of itself. It's like I don't even need to wish harm on them because they've already harmed themselves 100 times through what they've done.

[00:45:06] And then even further than that is, even though in this lifetime there have been instances in which I was objectively an innocent victim, but I don't know what shenanigans from our lifetimes. So it's quite possible that I've been a perpetrator of evil or harm a zillion times, and I just don't have a conscious memory of it because we're not designed to really hold all of that at once.

[00:45:40] I'm holding this lifetime, and from this perspective, I was an innocent little kid. Why did this happen to me? So all of those things are just ways I zoom out really far and just try to open my mind and open my mind while still acknowledging that evil exists. Some people are overtaken by it.

[00:46:00] And that there's been times in my life where those people that have succumbed to evil have harmed me. And whether or not they can pat themselves on the back for who I've become or what I've done with that experience is just not up to me. They can dream that dream all day long, and they're still going to have the same repercussions for what they did. They're still going to have to pay the piper just like I have and will continue to have any time I make a grave error like that and cause harm to anyone or anything.

[00:46:33] Alyson: Yeah. It's just in intriguing. You made some point, like, I never wish harm on anyone. So that's not a factor for me that I need to sort out. It's more just there is a sliver a bit of like-- I'm trying to say this without giving away the example that I'm talking about. But if there was somebody that was grossly negligent, harm happened, I was able to see some shamanic perspectives from it.

[00:47:15] So while I'm simultaneously in therapy and putting in lots of time, work, energy, hours to heal from that experience I'm also, thank God, able to see from a wider meta shamanic perspective, some of those more esoteric layers involved that I could glean into some gold alchemy for myself.

[00:47:45] And I have been arriving to the place where, thankfully, it's taken a couple of years, but where in the scales of balance, maybe I'm not fully healed from that experience, but majority, I would say, healed. And I am now more in alignment and embodiment with the lightning rights that came from that or my Oracle channel, coming fully online, and the conductiveness of and the purity of my channels are now on a whole other level.

[00:48:34] And my ultra-sensitivity is now on a whole other level. And that's taken some learning, but that's also a "gift." And yeah, it's not a big part, but there is a small part that's just like, I would have a small issue with the person who was negligent in that happening being like, "See, I knew it all along this thing that I created or this thing that happened, it was always going to be good for her." I could see the potential for that mindset being there, and I don't like that.

[00:49:17] Luke: Yeah, I get it.

[00:49:19] Alyson: And I don't wish harm on anyone.

[00:49:22] Luke: Of course, you don't. Forgiveness is a lot more challenging when there hasn't been accountability on the other side or acknowledgement or any restitution.

[00:49:37] Alyson: Yeah. That a big part of it.

[00:49:38] Luke: That's a bitch. When someone humbles themself before you and says, "Hey, man, about that thing, I know that was wrong. And I'm really sorry and I'm going to do my best not to do that." Again, not just a verbal sorry, but you feel it in their bones that they have an earnest regret and they feel your pain around it--

[00:49:58] Alyson: And they're able to humble themselves.

[00:50:01] Luke: Yeah. It's much easier to forgive than someone who just flat out denies it, narcissism, this thing where someone doesn't acknowledge it, doesn't take responsibility--

[00:50:12] Alyson: Either overriding.

[00:50:13] Luke: --doesn't make amends and makes no efforts at restitution, it's much more difficult to forgive and let it go or get caught up in, "Oh, goddamnit, I don't want them taking credit for this."

[00:50:25] Alyson: Yeah, that's it.

[00:50:27] Luke: But there's one level above that that I've looked at, and I don't know that I'm aware that anyone's like, "Oh, Luke learned that from me because I fucked him over." I don't know that that's happened, but it's like in the big theater of consciousness, in a way I can even give credit to that perpetrator-- not them, but them as an expression of consciousness--

[00:50:59] Alyson: Playing the part of the world.

[00:51:00] Luke: Yeah. Right. They're playing an archetype. They're playing a role. And consciousness had us intersect at the exact right moment where their wounds and my wounds matched up and it created this shit storm of pain.

[00:51:12] Alyson: Of course, that's how it happened, but still.

[00:51:16] Luke: No, I'm not denying the human part. And I'm also not claiming that I have this figured out, but these are just ways I think about it.

[00:51:23] Alyson: I'm so glad you brought that in because I don't know that I had put the dart on the dart board, exactly at that piece. I think that is the piece that leaves that lingering thing. Because when I think back to times where there was some wrongdoing or some harm or abuse, and the person has been able to humble themselves, honestly self-reflect, and take some genuine accountability, responsibility, and apologize, everything does just go clear. Yeah.

[00:52:05] Luke: You almost don't even have to forgive. It just automatically happens. It's not something that requires work.

[00:52:09] Alyson: It clears the whole energy field. But yeah, you're so right. When I'm thinking to the times where there's been a leftover or a lingering whatever, frustration, angst, annoyance, grievance, I think every single time it's when that person did not take accountability, responsibility, was not able to humble their ego enough, and/or didn't apologize. That's where the leftover thing in the field can get.

[00:52:49] Luke: Totally. It's an unrealistic expectation to have on human beings that are fallible, especially those that are really far from their truth. For me, though, I just want peace within. And so I don't see any way for me to have that unless I forgive everyone in every thing for all time, for eternity. No conditions, no apology necessary.

[00:53:28] It's harder, but I don't want to have any resentment in my field whatsoever. Now, for me to get to that place of forgiveness, I might need to have an uncomfortable conversation. I might attempt to hold someone to accountability or be honest about what I'm experiencing if it's someone that I'm in touch with.

[00:53:49] Alyson: But let's say you do that and you're two ships passing in the night, and you're not able to be met in that way. So then it continues to linger.

[00:53:59] Luke: Yeah.

[00:54:00] Alyson: And also, let's say forgiveness is in place. I think there can still then be the feeling left even when you have had the conversation, even when you have put in place genuine forgiveness, I think that there can still be left dangling in the field, like--

[00:54:25] Luke: Unfinished business.

[00:54:26] Alyson: Yeah.

[00:54:27] Luke: Yeah, 100%

[00:54:28] Alyson: Even when you have the forgiveness there.

[00:54:30] Luke: Much harder. Yeah.

[00:54:33] Alyson: It's just really interesting.

[00:54:35] Luke: There's a saying that says hell hath no fury like a woman's scorned, I think as it goes.

[00:54:41] Alyson: Yeah.

[00:54:43] Luke: You might biologically just be more prone to, I'm not going to let them off that easy. I think you're very forgiving. You certainly are with me when I make mistakes and you get pissed. Obviously, I'm not abusing you, but--

[00:55:00] Alyson: You're very humble, and you have no problem taking accountability.

[00:55:05] Luke: I hope so by this time. Yeah.

[00:55:07] Alyson: Yeah. So there's that difference.

[00:55:11] Luke: Yeah. But that is a major breakthrough when you have conflict with anyone, when that pride is still walling one person off and they won't humble themselves, to just be like, "Hey, man. I'm sorry, I made a mistake." Think about families that don't talk to each other for 40 freaking years.

[00:55:31] This is so prevalent that people just cannot let things go oftentimes until something really tragic happens. The matriarch or patriarch or the family dies, and then at the funeral all the siblings are like, "Hey, man. I'm sorry about that thing." And they hug it out and squash the beef.

[00:55:50] Oftentimes it takes a catalyst like that, but I just don't want to wait for the catalyst. That said, there's a lot of people that I've forgiven that I will never, ever talk to ever again and want absolutely nothing to do with them whatsoever. So it's like my forgiveness, depending on the nature of the mistake or harm that's been caused, what makes it possible for me to forgive is knowing like you are 100% out forever, but I hold no hate in my heart for you.

[00:56:27] I still have unconditional love from way far away. They're on the very outskirts, the rural district of my boundary line. They're way out there. Maybe in another continent. That's been necessary for me in order to forgive some people. It's like I can't keep on the merry-go-round with someone who's harming me and try and forgive them.

[00:56:50] Alyson: Sure. That's my last question in this, is like-- because over the last five-ish years I've put in a lot of work and investigation around anger, resentment, frustration, rumination, all those things, it's like-- so my last question for you, and then we'll switch gears and go to something lighter so everyone gets a little breather and a break, that thing of going round and around though, depending upon the circumstance, a central nervous system, what happened, it's like sometimes even when the person doesn't want to be going round and round with that resentment, energetic, sometimes-- oh, she's getting a wheezy. I might need to help her. Sometimes that just happens.

[00:57:38] So what tools or what have you found that has helped you really truly get off that resentment merry-go-round?

[00:57:46] Luke: Yeah. It's the same with any thought pattern that's got some emotional charge behind it. The way that would manifest for me is there's an unnamed sensation in my body that feels uncomfortable and then the mind starts to try to create meaning of it or create narratives around it.

[00:58:15] Alyson: Or analyze.

[00:58:16] Luke: Yeah, analyze. It's like the mind jumps in second position, riding shotgun to the sensations of the body that are unpleasant. The mind thinks that if it pours enough mental energy and analytics into that feeling, it's going to figure out how to stop the feeling from existing. So it's like the mind is this protector that comes in and creates this conspiracy like pin in the board with all the rubber bands going back and forth, connecting all the dots.

[00:58:56] That's just what the mind is designed to do. It creates an equation, almost a mathematical equation out of some social dynamic or something that happened because it feels like, or it erroneously believes that if it figures the problem out, then the feeling that I have is going to stop.

[00:59:20] And so my technique for that is super simple and really hard and takes a lot of practice, but as I'm living my life, working, talking, doing a podcast, whatever I'm doing, there's just a part of my awareness that is observing the shit show of thoughts coming out of my mind. And if one of them is, "Eff that person. How dare they? Next time I see them, this is what-- oh, I should have said this."

[00:59:56] Alyson: They didn't realize this. They're so unaware of this.

[00:59:59] Luke: Yeah. If my mind is boomeranging my awareness out of this reality, in this present slice of time we call the now, if I'm in some resentment or regret about a past that doesn't exist, that I can't change, or some anticipatory fear, anxiety about some fantasy or hallucination that I think is going to happen in the future, so I need to get ready for so I can teach them a lesson or show them what was wrong or whatever--

[01:00:25] Alyson: Or I could show up a certain way.

[01:00:26] Luke: Yeah. It's just like, I can't take the pain of that. So I think in those moments I'm appreciative of the mind for it wanting to do that job for me, and I think I'm grateful that that computer is there trying to compute things. But also there's a higher part of me that is wise enough to know that even though it's trying to do something for me, it's really doing something that's harming me by keeping me in that. So it's just a constant surrender when a thought like that comes up and tries to grab on and get fed by emotional energy.

[01:01:09] Alyson: So It's not that you are trying to necessarily get that thought to cease, but you found a way to create enough witness to it.

[01:01:20] Luke: There's a gap, where I'm sitting here talking to you, and out of the ethers arises this thought of, you know what? Eff that guy. It's like when it rises to the surface, it's not that I'm trying to push it away or fight it, I just withdraw my attention and energy from it so that it can't grow. It's like cutting off the oxygen supply to thoughts that don't serve me.

[01:01:53] Now, if I have emotional stuff stuck in my nervous system that needs to be processed and I need to go punch something or throw something, or freak out, or go in my car and scream, I'm not talking about bypassing or denying feelings, but the rumination part of it, the self-talking mind that gets caught in that really painful ceaseless analysis.

[01:02:19] In the book, Sermon on the Mount, Emmett Fox talks a lot about the mind, and he talks about those thoughts as enemy soldiers on the battlefield. And if you allow those soldiers to dig foxholes, they start to multiply and grow, and then you can't get them out. That's the story of my life and why I felt the need to anesthetize myself for so long, because my mind was just so tortured. I could not stop thinking about things that hurt me at all.

[01:02:47] And I choose not to remedy that problem now by just turning my mind off with chemicals. But it's like, well, how can I do that on the natch? And for me, it's like hot potato. You throw that fucking resentment at me, I'm like, "I'm catching it." It's not worth it. Whatever juice I'm going to get out of that of being right and like, ah, it's just not worth it. There's no payoff.

[01:03:13] Alyson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Amen.

[01:03:15] Luke: Yeah.

[01:03:17] Alyson: That was a nice conversation. You want to switch gears and do some of Luke's latest discoveries?

[01:03:24] Luke: Let's do that. Yeah. I thought of something else actually earlier when we were talking about ego and humility and these kind of things.

[01:03:36] Alyson: Mm-hmm.

[01:03:37] Luke: First off, I've done 340 ayahuasca ceremonies, so my ego is gone. No, I'm just kidding.

[01:03:44] Alyson: Said with--

[01:03:44] Luke: Yeah, it's funny. I haven't done that many ayahuasca ceremonies. But I think it's funny when someone's still in a body and they're like, "Oh, I have no ego." I'm like, "You wouldn't be alive if that was the case." But anyway, one exercise that I really enjoy to keep myself humble and drive my ego absolutely nuts is doing embarrassing shit that I feel self-conscious about and then just doing it for that reason.

[01:04:14] Alyson: Hmm.

[01:04:16] Luke: It's like inviting little ego deaths all the time, especially on social media, where if, say, I'm going to post something and I go, "Ah, I look kind of lame. People are probably going to troll me. This is whack. I want to look cooler, smarter, whatever." I go, "Ooh, perfect post." Clicks in. That's the sign that it's going to be good for me.

[01:04:40] And so leading into, what do we call it, Luke's latest, my latest discoveries, I've been out of CO2, and I'll explain for those not watching on video. Those on video, hi. I'm glad you made it this far. You'll understand what's happening here.

[01:04:57] I do the CO2 therapy through inhaling or by wearing a CO2 suit, and I just didn't have the luxury of driving an hour and a half, but probably two hours both ways to go fill up my CO2 tanks at the home brewing store.

[01:05:13] So I've been out of CO2, and I haven't been able to do my suit, which I'm wearing right now. It's from a company called Carbogenetics, and they make this inhaler and this suit. And so I've really been missing it. And I was like, today's the day that I had an opportunity to put it on because you want to sit in it for a couple hours really to get the full impact, which I'll explain.

[01:05:36] And I thought, "Wow, God, we got to do that podcast. And then the next thought was like, "Oh, I could just wear the suit during the podcast." And my ego heard me having that conversation with myself, opened the door, and was like, "Yeah, no, we're not wearing a goddamn Michelin man blue wetsuit in a podcast.

[01:05:53] "You're way cooler than that. And we cannot let people see you being such a dork. You'll literally die and people are going to leave YouTube comments about what a dumb ass you are. And people are going to stop listening to your podcast. You're going to be the laughing stock."

[01:06:09] Alyson: They're going to do screenshots and post you in the suit.

[01:06:12] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a couple of those thoughts and I'm like, "Oh, hell yeah. Definitely have to do that." And hopefully people do troll me because then I'll have an opportunity to dis-identify from that part of myself that feels embarrassed or feels ashamed because someone doesn't like me or the way I talk or the way I look.

[01:06:33] Alyson: Somebody that doesn't even know you that you care what they are trying to say that about you, and they've never met you.

[01:06:39] Luke: Yeah. It's a great exercise for me, for desensitizing myself to what other people think, but also a reminder that I'm not that important. Who cares what people think about me, especially people I'm never going to meet because it doesn't have an impact on the world or on my life? You know what I mean?

[01:07:03] I don't even think if someone's president of this country, it matters that people like them or not, or troll them or not. They don't care. It literally has no impact on their life. Right?

[01:07:13] Alyson: We've talked about this quite a number of times just in our personal life, these concepts. It's like, yes, when you hear you say that, that's accurate. That's logical. That's a fact checker. But again, though, try telling that to the seven-year-old part that still rears up because the seven-year-old wasn't unconditionally loved.

[01:07:47] And in order to keep the family unit together, the 7-year-old had to be "perfect," or else they felt that their world would implode or their family would implode, or they'd lose a primary relationship. So it's just like there's so many like layers and nuances to all of this.

[01:08:06] It's like so many people do hold themselves back from entering into the real arena of life or the arena of social media, or the arena of being a public speaker a public figure, because they know what you are saying is true, it's logical, and it's real.

[01:08:27] And yet there's just these aspects or these parts that can overtake or start to run the show. And the next thing you know, you're backing out of the arena of life or being like, "On second thought, even though I've had dreams of being a public speaker on this topic, like it's way too scary to think of people screenshotting me and saying stuff about me. So easier to just not do it."

[01:08:52] Luke: Yeah, totally. I've been there. I think that's all a case of mistaken identity. It's like, okay, the real me-- we use the Carbongenetics CO2 series as an example. Okay, the real me has a desire to do something that consciousness gave me, put in me. "Hey, you feel really good when you do that. It's very, very relaxing."

[01:09:24] It's like taking a Valium and a Percocet. Not that you get high, but it eliminates all pain in your body. All inflammation is gone. It's like being in a hot tub or something, maybe. So there's like the self-caring, self-loving healing, part of me is like, "Yeah, you should do that."

[01:09:47] And then says, "It's your podcast. It's your life. It's your wife. It's y'all's house. You can do whatever you want. Why don't you just wear it tomorrow?" The voice that comes in and says, "Are you kidding me? Do you know what they're going to say about you?" That is not me. And the people that would troll or screenshot or whatever, they're not even judging or talking about me, the real me.

[01:10:11] They're judging the persona, the biohacker guy in the blue suit. They're projecting their, say, judgment or disapproval or whatever on something that's not even me anyway. So it's like, how could that hurt me when they're talking about this guy that's across the room? It's another persona.

[01:10:33] It's a whole identity that I've assumed my whole life was me. The same way when you get a letter from a financial institution or from some branch of government and it has an all caps name, and it's a scary looking agency or something. It's like that used to elicit a certain response in me because I thought they wrote this scary letter to me, and they were going to make some demands of me or try to contract with me.

[01:10:58] And once I started to really embody the fact that there's a corporate version of me in the commercial law world that has an all caps name associated with the birth certificate and so on-- people have heard us talk about this on past episodes-- then there's the real me, Luke Carlson Storey that's a living flesh and blood man.

[01:11:20] I'm just like any other animal running around on the face of the planet. So it's like those letters are less scary because I know they're not to me. They're writing to a business entity. And if people judge me or make fun of me or talk shit about me or gossip or do whatever, troll, they're not actually doing it to me. They're doing it to this alter ego, this persona. They're literally attacking the ego that I was born with that has developed a sense of identity.

[01:11:46] Alyson: Right.

[01:11:46] Luke: So go nuts.

[01:11:48] Alyson: So let's say someone listening, again, they're hearing you say this and they're like, "That resonates. I agree with that. That feels correct." And yet how do you not allow it to penetrate your field to have any impact on you? I feel like that's a potential play for a lot of people.

[01:12:10] Luke: Part of it for me, and I don't know if this'll work for everyone, is exposure therapy in just allowing myself to be more free, more authentic, more transparent, vulnerable. It's like what we were talking about earlier.

[01:12:29] When you have challenging situations in your life and it feels like life's against you, and that some time goes by and you have a broader perspective, you see, oh, there was value in that. There was wisdom to be gained in that. It's the same thing. It's like you put yourself out on a limb. You ask someone on a date. You go for the job interview. You try to raise money for your company, whatever.

[01:12:50] You're trying to start your social media profile and change careers, any vulnerable public arena where you could be judged. It's like you just test the waters and try different things. And if what you were afraid of happens, you see as that happens a few times, that it literally has no effect on you unless you let it.

[01:13:12] I don't know. It's like you're desensitizing yourself to public opinion. And the more I've put myself out there, the less I care how it's received. Not that I don't care that I'm helping people, but that for those that aren't feeling the Luke Storey experience, it's like I care less because I've lived through it enough times where it just loses its value and its meaning. I don't get the charge that I might've gotten.

[01:13:41] Say I do a post and there's a bunch of really negative comments. There would've been a time where I felt like it was going to kill me. Like, oh my God, I'm over. I'm through. I'm the laughing stock. And then the next day passes and everyone forgets about it, and they move on to trolling someone else, and it made no difference. So it's like a process of tracking those for me and desensitizing myself. And also just doing things that are super embarrassing sometimes just for the exercise of doing it.

[01:14:13] I totally understand what you're saying because, oh my God, I used to be so self-conscious. This is how like self-obsessed and self-absorbed I was. When I went anywhere, I felt like every single person in the vicinity where I was, was staring at me the entire time. I'm talking about going to a bar, a grocery store, a yoga class.

[01:14:40] Alyson: When I was in college and I was eating at a Cracker Barrel with my mom, I went into a panic attack because of that. I looked up from reading the Cracker Barrel menu-- I went to school at the University of Alabama just for reference for people, like, why is she eating at a Cracker Barrel.

[01:14:57] And when I looked up from the menu, I could have sworn that everyone in that main dining hall was turned and looking at me, and it just sparked this instantaneous panic attack. I had to go to the bathroom, try to calm down. I think, if I remember correctly-- oh my God, this was 20-whatever years ago.

[01:15:19] But I think when I got back to the table, I said to my mom that we might've even needed to leave, because the panic attack was still there. But I could have sworn that everyone was turned and staring at me.

[01:15:30] Alyson: Yeah.

[01:15:31] Luke: It's, I think, just a really--

[01:15:40] Alyson: Primal?

[01:15:41] Luke: No, major identification with ego, where it's just like the mind that I was talking about before where there's no gap of awareness or separation between the identity of the ego, and the true nature of who and what I really am is one unique expression of consciousness. And to your question too, the exposure therapy thing is real.

[01:16:10] That's really been helpful to me. But also, this is where practices like meditation come in. And for some people sometimes, maybe plant medicines and things where you have a higher perspective on yourself and you can step outside of yourself and see yourself and your persona and all your games and all the thoughts and all the fucking ego insecurities and grandiosity, all the bullshit that's not you.

[01:16:39] For me, it controlled me until I was able to get a little bit of distance and go, "Oh, there's an adult in the room here. I literally don't care if I fail, if I look like a failure, if I'm embarrassed. It's only this temporary body associative, sensory-based self that cares because it is the thing that needs to survive because it's not eternal. It makes sense. The ego identity's job is to keep the body alive because the ego dies when I leave this body. But I don't die. So what if I live my life like the guy who never dies?

[01:17:23] Alyson: Mm-hmm.

[01:17:23] Luke: Then it's like it gives the part of me that's trying to hang on to life and what people think a little break. It's like, "Hey, ego, you actually don't have to work that hard. You're not going to be around for that long, so what people think of you as a public figure or whatever, it really doesn't matter. You're really not important because I'm going to be leaving here, and I'm going to be leaving you behind. So let's just make friends.

[01:17:49] "And why don't you stop torturing me so much, making me feel embarrassed or judged by people. And help me to not care. Because I'm telling you, you don't need to care because we're going to be forgotten in just a few years." So anyway, those are some of the ways that I look at things like this.

[01:18:09] Alyson: Wonderful.

[01:18:10] Luke: Obviously, me, it's a work in progress, dude. I don't have this figured out by any stretch. Okay, so couple of my latest-- not necessarily latest discoveries, but just things that I'm appreciating because this is the questions I get a lot from people who are like, "Ah, what are you onto lately? What's the latest and greatest?" This company called Mara Labs-- you know this stuff. You take their stuff.

[01:18:42] Alyson: Yeah, I take a few different things.

[01:18:43] Luke: I've had them on the show a couple times and--

[01:18:46] Alyson: I take their quercetin, I think.

[01:18:47] Luke: Yeah, the Quercetin Elite.

[01:18:49] Alyson: And the one with the berb--

[01:18:53] Luke: Oh, the berberine. Yeah, BerbElite. Yeah, so Mara Lab's been on. But sometimes I meet so many people on this show, and there's so many great founders and inventors and chemists and formulators. There's people doing great things in the tech space around wellness or supplements, and I'll learn a lot about something, but then the interview's over and I'm onto the next one, and it doesn't really sink in.

[01:19:17] So when we had Mara Labs on, I was like, oh, okay, this is legit. There's science-- "trust the science." But no, real studies, and there's data to support this guy's claims of what he thinks his product does, etc. I take it for a while, and if I see results, then I keep doing it. And then I recommend other people try it too. But this one the curcumin, the CurcElite, basically David figured out a way to make it very bioavailable.

[01:19:37] The problem with curcumin is that you don't assimilate it. And so he cracked the code on that. And this CurcElite, I guess you'd call it, is a daily go-to now because like this Carbogenetic suit I'm wearing, I find it's really good for inflammation. If I'm just feeling like aches and pains-- like when I was writing a lot, I'd get this tennis elbow tendonitis feeling.

[01:20:13] It's just a little aging aches and pains, and I find that is really useful for that. Also since we're getting in the holiday season, we have crates of these Little Saints in the house.

[01:20:25] Alyson: That's the one I like right there. The ginger one is--

[01:20:27] Luke: The one Alyson likes is the Ginger Mule. Some of them taste their mocktails.

[01:20:32] Alyson: Very potent.

[01:20:33] Luke: Yeah. But some of them really taste like gin and whiskey and stuff, which I personally like. But Alyson, she likes the ginger one.

[01:20:40] Alyson: I'll stick with a ginger

[01:20:42] Luke: But I actually just really like the idea of being able to have a cocktail and have the ritual and not have the side effects. And she puts really great reishi extract and different herbs, damiana, and things like that.

[01:20:56] So you do get a little buzz. I was shooting the video the other day of the whiskey one. What's it called? St. Oak, I think it's called. Because I was shooting a video, so I kept drinking them. I must have had three or four glasses of it. And by no means was I intoxicated at all, but god damn. I was like, dude, I feel real chill. I felt really good.

[01:21:19] Alyson: Is it possible to be intoxicated on herbs? Would that be the right term?

[01:21:24] Luke: Ayahuasca's a herbs, so yeah. But not on herbs, no. You could drink a case of those and you wouldn't be high. Another one that I've been digging in the same way, but in a cocktail it's more portable, is Pique Tea, the company. You like their tea.

[01:21:41] So they have this new adaptogenic, little [Inaudible], this little drink called Vesper, and it's got all these crazy-ass Chinese herbs and stuff, but it's super concentrated. Not that it tastes bad, but it's super strong. So I think right now I'm gravitating toward things that are calming. because I was so hopped up on nootropics and shit on my book.

[01:22:04] I was just cracked out, chewing my coca leaf, doing all the things. So now I'm really about, all right, what calms me down? And this suit, Carbogenetics is incredible for inflammation. And also when you absorb this CO2 transdermally like I'm doing in this wacky suit, it's also incredible for oxygen uptake.

[01:22:27] So essentially your cells become really hungry for oxygen, and they're able to take more. The suit is not the kind of thing I have time or space to do all the time. But when I do, it's amazing. And then the last thing is we got these paramedic lasers we've had in the house for years, and I'll put them away and think like, oh, that was nice. I don't need it. And then all of a sudden we need it.

[01:22:52] And the most recent case was Jarrod, our associate producer here, broke his wrist and doctors told him he needed surgery, and he didn't want to do that. So he's been hammering his wrist with these lasers, and no surgery. Bone is healing.

[01:23:06] Alyson: Cool.

[01:23:06] Luke: Yeah. Epic. I love to see like real results that are quantifiable. I know they've helped me. And when I adopted Cookie, that's how I sealed her surgery wound.

[01:23:18] Alyson: Right. Yeah. Those are cool. I know they're powerful.

[01:23:22] Luke: So those are my latest discoveries.

[01:23:27] Alyson: Okay.

[01:23:28] Luke: As you can see, I've transformed into a completely different person as a result. So I'm always curious about what you gravitate toward, and I always see you with these Boost minerals sprays.

[01:23:40] Alyson: I am legit obsessed with these. And I don't say that about much, but yeah. I love saying the name of this is, the BooBoo-Lytes.

[01:23:48] Luke: The BooBoo-Lytes.

[01:23:49] Alyson: The BooBoo-Lytes. So yeah, with Beam minerals, she's got different formulations, different scents. I guess this one's technically-- I'm just now seeing it for the first time for kids, but it's my favorite. It's the BooBoo-Lytes.

[01:24:03] Luke: That's the lavender one?

[01:24:04] Alyson: That's the lavender. Yeah, I'm obsessed with lavender. I have been for a very, very long time. It's been a main medicine for me the last few years. It's just so calming and soothing. So yeah, it's fulvic mineral complex with 100% therapeutic grade essential oil of lavender. You know me and my sprays and mists.

[01:24:29] Luke: They're really good for Cookie when she gets itchy too.

[01:24:32] Alyson: Yeah. She has very sensitive skin.

[01:24:34] Luke: I forget which one of them I use. Maybe I just grab whatever. But they're really good for mosquito bites too.

[01:24:41] Alyson: It's probably the BooBoo-Lytes.

[01:24:42] Luke: Yeah. It stops them from itching.

[01:24:44] Alyson: And also, this is a newer one for me. I don't love it as much as the lavender, but I do thoroughly enjoy it. It's called Happy-Lytes. And it has the same fulvic mineral complex, but it's mixed with essential oral of bergamot, which is really an intriguing scent, which must have some happiness inducing therapeutic scent.

[01:25:10] So yeah, it's really nice. I carry them. I usually have one I take with me in my car. I have the lavender one by the bedside. I always mist my pillow and my face before I go to bed. But yeah, I use those daily. I love me some mist. Constantly misting.

[01:25:28] Luke: There's little bottles everywhere. Not only those, but other times too.

[01:25:29] Alyson: I don't go anywhere without a mist.

[01:25:31] Luke: Blow this way [Inaudible].

[01:25:32] Alyson: I should count throughout the day how many times. And I use all sorts of different mist, but these are two of my faves. But yeah, I mist probably minimum 200 times a day.

[01:25:41] Luke: I've followed your lead on that. I have some on my desk.

[01:25:46] Alyson: [Inaudible] game changer.

[01:25:47] Luke: Yeah. I'm into it.

[01:25:48] Alyson: Yeah. So those are my contributions to Luke's latest, plus his wife, Alyson.

[01:25:54] Luke: You're a really good test subject because you have so much sovereignty. You'll never do anything just because I think you should do it, which is great.

[01:26:04] Alyson: That's true. I'm very sovereign.

[01:26:07] Luke: The controlling part of me doesn't like that because if I have an idea, this would be really great for Alyson, and then I tell you, and you're like, "I don't feel called to that." I'm like, "Ah, God. Come on. Feel called." Just try it. So it's cool when you try things because it helps me see what works.

[01:26:22] Also just, for lack of a better term, what works for normal people-- not everyone is as obsessed with all this shit as me, obviously. I don't know. God made me this way for some reason. I have no idea why. But for someone like you that doesn't take tons of supplements, you're not into all this biohacking stuff, it is always fun for me to see what you gravitate toward.

[01:26:44] Because that helps me know what might be supportive to other people, people that listen to the show, follow me on social that are also just like living their life and don't want to be in encumbered by a bunch of stuff.

[01:26:56] Alyson: I also do like the red light we have on right now. I do genuinely--

[01:27:00] Luke: Oh, the SaunaSpace light. Would you plug it in?

[01:27:02] Alyson: It is.

[01:27:03] Luke: It's plugged in? Oh, I'm surprised I'm not hot. I'm glad you remember that because I really actually wanted to give SaunaSpace a shout out. I've had their sauna for a number of years now. I think it's called the Faraday. It's the grounded like Faraday cage one. So we have that downstairs.

[01:27:25] I took a sauna in there this morning, and we have the Sunlighten sauna up here. Quality problems. Some would say privileged. I know, but it took a lot of years to get there. I used to have to go to the gym to take a sauna. You know what I'm saying?

[01:27:38] Alyson: And before that, you wouldn't have had money to have a gym membership.

[01:27:41] Luke: Oh, 100%. Yeah.

[01:27:42] Alyson: So that's progression.

[01:27:43] Luke: Yeah, 100%. And I'm also 55, so I've been working since 1985. You know what I mean?

[01:27:48] Alyson: Yeah, yeah.

[01:27:49] Luke: So it didn't happen overnight.

[01:27:50] Alyson: We're no spring chickens here.

[01:27:54] Luke: But anyway, the SaunaSpace sauna's a really great therapy, and I've been loving that. But then we got the extra panel. I think they call it the Firelight or something. And it's the one you can see behind Alyson, those of you on video.

[01:28:06] And this is the panel that goes inside the sauna enclosure. But I ended up with an extra one because we upgraded the one in the sauna. So anyway, we have that. And I was like, "Oh, what am I going to do with this?" I put it in our bedroom, and it's like having a little fireplace next to the bed. It's so dope.

[01:28:25] Alyson: When you wake up and it's cold in the room and you put that on, I sit in front of it naked. I start my mornings chanting. So I'll be chanting, sitting in front of it every morning. It's so nice.

[01:28:35] Luke: Yeah. And also just on the health tip, it's really amazing to get near infrared light first thing in the morning. And that's why I get up and watch the sunrise every day. But you click that thing on and you're getting as close to a full spectrum sun-like red light. And it's also super toasty and just cozy.

[01:28:56] So I love that. I highly recommend. I have two of the small ones, the single lights in my office, and that's how I balance out the blue light and flicker and shit and get infrared in the room. But I highly recommend for people in the winter, if you can afford it-- I forget how much they are.

[01:29:11] They're definitely not cheap, but even one of the little single ones, you put that in your bedroom, and you get the same effect. You don't need the full four. It might even be a little extreme depending on the size of your room. So if you want good fire light, that is my, not my latest discovery, but a repurposing of something that I was using just as a sauna.

[01:29:33] Alyson: Wonderful. As we're coming around the corner here, turning the bend to more of the home stretch, you want to talk about something random as Cookie's over there trying to freak out for dinnertime, hitting Jarrod's leg?

[01:29:48] Luke: I love when you're random. That's when you're at your best.

[01:29:53] Alyson: This one's super, super random. I personally don't even know exactly if I have much to say on it, but I feel like you will. I was driving the other day, and you know when things just randomly strike you or occur to you and you're just like, "Huh, I've never thought about that."

[01:30:12] I happened to be behind a truck, and his license plate at the top of it said, in God we trust. It was words on the actual license plate but on the top. So it said, in God we trust, and then whatever his license plate number was.

[01:30:29] And I've probably seen a license plate that has the words and God we trust on it, I don't know, hundreds or thousands of times in my life, I would guess. But it just never really struck me for whatever reason until a couple of weeks ago when I saw it. And for some reason, when I read it, I just started to think to myself, it seems like we've gotten as a country so far away from that statement, in God we trust.

[01:31:07] Let me just say it one more time actually, in God we trust. It's such a powerful, beautiful statement. And you could say that's how I live my life. I've worded it other ways when I explain my devotion and the place from which I live from. And I'm not willing to compromise my connection to the divine, to God. I know people sometimes that particular word can have, I don't know, some sensitivities or charge to it.

[01:31:52] I personally like to refer to it as God. I also say great spirit. But it's such a powerful statement, and the whole drive home, I just couldn't stop thinking about how this is-- I started to research it because I was like, "Why am I so struck by this? When I read it on this license plate, why am I thinking about it so much?"

[01:32:14] And if my research is correct, the phrase "In God we trust" became the official motto of our country. It's the official United States motto as of 1956. That is our country's motto, in God we trust. And I don't know. Maybe I'm looking at things funny. Maybe I'm not living in the right area of the country, but it just seems to me that there's not a whole lot going on in this country that lives by or speaks to or adheres to what is the motto of our country, in God we trust.

[01:32:59] It seems like we're very far removed from the majority of the population, having that as a founding principle of their lives or a guiding foundation from which they go about their day or their daily operation. So I was just fascinated and mystified by this. And I think that's probably all I have to add to that, is just the fascination. So I'll let you take it from here, but what are your thoughts on that?

[01:33:31] Luke: Well, I had no idea that it was the official motto.

[01:33:34] Alyson: Maybe I'm wrong.

[01:33:35] Luke: No, I--

[01:33:35] Alyson: But I think that's what it says.

[01:33:37] Luke: If the interweb told you that's what it is, it probably is. The funny thing about that, and maybe one of the reasons that you're not seeing that as a more prevalent ethos is based on the fact that the entity that claimed that as our motto is a corporation called the United States. It's a company.

[01:34:06] And so why would any of us follow the motto of a company that we don't necessarily believe in. When I walk in Target and they have a, there's something for everyone motto, I'm not going to just take that as my motto. It's some company. So I think there's a divorce between our intuitive knowing that what we-- at least, I could probably speak for most of my friends and the way we view our country and patriotism, it's based on the United States of America.

[01:34:44] It's America. It's a melting pot of Americans, people from all over the world that came here and made it this amazing place that it is. But the foundation is there, and then there's an overlay that is this corporation. And that corporation is the one that's using inversion of reality or inversion of good, because everything that that corporation does is to feed itself at the expense of the people living on this territory of land.

[01:35:18] Alyson: But what would be their point in picking that as their motto?

[01:35:24] Luke: A diversion maybe, or maybe those in power do trust in a God, but it's just not the God we're thinking of based on--

[01:35:34] Alyson: There are different types of gods.

[01:35:36] Luke: Based on how genocidal and violent and exploitive and deceitful they are, they as in the state in general. But even underneath that, you have the real ethos culturally of this land, I think, based on the indigenous peoples who were here originally-- from what I could gather.

[01:36:02] And there's probably different levels of truth as to who they were. Maybe there were people that we would think of as African-Americans that were also native to this continent. And there were also the Native Americans, the Indians, who knows. History's all a lie, so we don't really know.

[01:36:16] But we know there were people here presumably before Europeans came over and went like, "Hey, fuck you guys. We're taking all this." But I think all indigenous cultures, from what I know of them, live by the ethos of in creator we trust, in God we trust in, in the earth we trust, in nature we trust.

[01:36:34] It's this animism throughout most indigenous cultures. So I can get behind in God we trust as like a country slogan or motto or principle, but not the version of it that's being given to me by the corporation called the United States, capital u, capital s, located in the District of Columbia.

[01:36:56] Alyson: Hmm.

[01:36:57] Luke: So that's a very convoluted answer or perspective on it. But at its core base level, trusting in God is the only way I am not six feet under. There's no way I could handle life, this human experience without surrendering all of it to God. And everything we talked about before, forgiveness and all of that is all based on trusting in the benevolence of consciousness as it expresses itself, which to me is what God is.

[01:37:35] But it is interesting that the state uses religious terminology or spiritual terminology, but they don't live by it or follow it in any way. Maybe some of the Founding Fathers, as they're called, instituted some of these principles in the Constitution. Maybe some of them lived by it and believed in it, and perhaps it was subjugated or taken over.

[01:38:13] What's the word I'm looking for? Like, counterfeit. There's maybe counterfeit iterations of what the government here was supposed to be or was at some time. But when you told me that the other day, I was like, oh, that's what's on Federal Reserve notes, which most of us think of as money, but they're not actually money.

[01:38:32] If you look up money in a legal dictionary, it says silver and gold coins. That's what money is legally defined as. Fed reserve notes are promissory notes. They're just a promise to pay. So our money is fake, and they put such authentic and real motto on the money, in God we trust. But it's literally printed on something that is antithetical to God because it's based on deception and usery and falsehood.

[01:39:02] So that's the inversion, is where the dark side of the polarity energies use goodness as a shield or a tool of manipulation. But that doesn't mean that there's not goodness still within the principle. It's being used in the wrong way or being used for malevolent purposes.

[01:39:26] That doesn't make it any less true. So I can see that on a fake ass dollar bill and be like, "Yeah, it's still true, even though it's being used in a way that is out of alignment for how I would apply it in my life."

[01:39:42] Alyson: Yeah, it's really interesting. And now as we're talking about a little bit more, I'm curious, whose idea was it in 1956 to make that the motto? Why? How often is there a new motto? Does anyone care about the motto?

[01:40:03] Luke: It'd be interesting to know who was the spearhead behind that. Because by 1956 this country was completely sold out to foreign interest and was a shell of a country just absolutely based on debt and feudalism. So it's like if that had been the thing in 1874, it'd be like, oh, okay, someone probably really meant it. But by 1956, this country was pretty much like just blown out--

[01:40:36] Alyson: Yeah. It's very interesting.

[01:40:38] Luke: --in terms of its identity.

[01:40:39] Alyson: Okay. Let's do one more thing and wrap it up as Cookie is really getting-- he's been feeding her treats. Yeah. It doesn't matter. Once she gets to this stage of hunger, there's no--

[01:40:52] Luke: When you start a podcast shortly after one, we know it's coming.

[01:40:56] Alyson: Yeah. I couldn't help but chuckle as you were trying to explain your perspective on the last topic, because I see your show producer over there feeding Cookie treats to get her to not bark out loud on the show. It was quite amusing.

[01:41:13] Okay, so to wrap this one up, how about we close out with reminding everyone joining us here that we are closing out the year of snake medicine. So 2025 was the year of the wood snake. And we will be heading into-- whenever it becomes the Chinese New Year in 2026, which I'm pretty sure it's February something. It's like mid to late February, if I'm not mistaken.

[01:41:43] So come mid to late February, we will officially pivot to the year. It's a very different energy. So get ready for it, if you don't already know. it. This is good for both you and I for different reasons. It's the year of the fire horse. So I thought that was so interesting that the year your book will get released, which is-- have you said the title yet?

[01:42:07] Luke: Yeah, all the time.

[01:42:07] Alyson: Oh, okay. I was like, "Uh, self-edit." So your book, A Horse Named Lonesome will release officially in the year of the horse.

[01:42:17] Luke: That's so epic.

[01:42:18] Alyson: And we started this episode talking about just the timing of the writing and the synchronicities of timing and dates. And certainly wasn't a part of your plan, your book.

[01:42:29] Luke: The whole thing is about connection and how everything's connected essentially. So yeah, that's a just another one to chalk onto the list.

[01:42:38] Alyson: So perfect.

[01:42:39] Luke: I might even add that when I go back and edit, like, yeah, this is coming out the year of the horse. There's just so many examples of those synchronicities, and I choose to believe in magic personally. A lot of people could just say it's by chance, but it's a lot more fun to believe in magic than it is skepticism.

[01:43:01] Alyson: So with that, if this resonates and speaks to you, one could-- because by the time this airs, it'll be the very end of November. So you would just have a couple of months remaining with the snake energy.

[01:43:18] So it could be a good time to just tune into and start to meditate on and focus on, are there any last snake skin remnants before you fully slough off that snake skin? I love snake skin so much. That one we found in Colorado, I left in the glove box of our rental car. Dope.

[01:43:38] Luke: Oh.

[01:43:39] Alyson: God, I really like that one. But somebody found it.

[01:43:42] Luke: Yeah. I'm sure they were stoked.

[01:43:44] Alyson: Yeah. The right person would be stoked to find that when they opened it. But they probably thought there was a snake in the car, living in there.

[01:43:51] Luke: Oh yeah. And it went in the glove to do a change.

[01:43:53] Alyson: Yeah, yeah. It was nesting in there. But anyways, yeah. So there's a lot of different healing attributes and medicine meaning to the snake as a power animal guide. But one of the main ones is releasing and the sloughing off of that skin, which also makes me think about how when that old skin is fully released-- you can picture it now.

[01:44:24] Oh my gosh, I can even feel the sensitivity of the new skin. Just how shiny and bright-- there's just such a unique quality to that underlying fresh skin that's revealed just as the old one is released. And so I guess when I'm picturing this and tuning into that, maybe also giving yourself some grace as you're in that transition point.

[01:44:56] Once those old components have with honor been released, there might be a heightened sensitivity as you're coming into the new you before you officially transition into fire and horse. And I'm really excited about both. because I do love horse medicine genuinely.

[01:45:17] I should have brought my book out here. I don't know what I was thinking. But yeah, horse is a lot about new adventures in life, horsepower. When you think of a wild horse, how are they acting? Freedom. So there's a lot of really incredible qualities to horse medicine.

[01:45:40] One thing to keep in mind though, because it's such a really stark contrast and wild transition from snake to horse, with every archetype, with every animal, there's shadow and light. And so if you let the energetics of the wild horse go full throttle and you're not managing it and you don't have enough awareness, it can get into some chaos or some frenzied energy, getting bucked off some things.

[01:46:17] So I do think it's important to, as the energies shift, be present and be mindful and be aware of that when that freedom energy kicks up. Yeah, to just have an extra heightened mindfulness until we adjust. We've got a year to be with horse. And then for me, I'm personally excited about the fire component too because I'm a fire keeper, and you know how much I love fire. I sit in front of the fire every single morning.

[01:46:50] Even when it doesn't warrant turning on our fireplace, I have it on, and I'm sitting there naked in front of it. And I love fires outside, commuting with fire, reading the fire, prayers, offerings. I'm just so into fire. It brought me to tears the other day, but that's a conversation for another time.

[01:47:10] But I look forward to bringing people to the fire next year more. I do plan and intend on having fire gatherings where there's different themes for prayers, different themes for offerings, maybe even teaching people more about pyromancy, learning how to read the flames, the smoke, when you give an offering to the fire and it changes.

[01:47:32] Teaching people how to reconnect to that intuitive knowing inside. Because we all have it. Some traditions believe the fire is the original shaman of our planet. It's been here for millions, billions of years. Think of the record keeping that the fire has. It's really incredible.

[01:47:53] It's truly mind blowing. I could go on and on. So yeah, just some things to keep in mind as we're getting ready to close out this here year and pivot from wood snake to fire horse. Even when you just hear me say that, can you not feel?

[01:48:08] Luke: It sounds badass.

[01:48:10] Alyson: Yeah. Well, it's a big change.

[01:48:12] Luke: It sounds badass. You know one thing I like to do with fire?

[01:48:14] Alyson: What? Fire, fire, fire.

[01:48:16] Luke: Yeah, that. With a lot of things, with elements, water, nature, etc. But with fire, when I'm looking at the fire, I like to pretend like I've never seen a fire before. Like it's the very first time I've ever experienced that element. And looking at fire from that perspective, you can only try because you know you've seen it before.

[01:48:40] But imagine you came from another planet where there was no such thing as fire, and all of a sudden you're sitting there looking at this living being that can be-- it's a perfect representation of duality too, because it can destruct and destroy, and it can also feed new life.

[01:49:00] It sustains life. it warms life. It can keep you alive just as fast as it can kill you. I mean, it's such a noble and dualistic element. It's the raddest thing ever. And I am with you. We have a little fire pit in the backyard. Nothing too elaborate. But I would like to put more attention into that. Our pool broke, so we got to fix our pool, and that's going to make us have to fix a couple of other things.

[01:49:27] But I'm on board with this fire idea. I'm also feeling part of my shedding is this insulated life of solitude. I've been living in this creative process and really want to call in the fire horse of a pack of wild horses and really start to put some effort into spending more time with community and around other people and really connecting. So I think the horse and the fire are a great opportunity. And we got a backyard.

[01:50:01] Alyson: It's the perfect opportunity because fire is probably the most ancient thing that brings people together. Sitting around the fire and communing in that way is probably the most, or one of the most ancient human practices.

[01:50:20] Luke: Totally. Plus, it's really good for you, infrared heat. It's really good for you. And it's also a really good demonstration or metaphor for the illusion of separation. Because you have a fire and then you take four sticks and you light them on fire, and the minute you put them in the main fire, then it's no longer a stick on fire.

[01:50:44] Now it all joins in one fire. It's a really cool physical representation of a metaphysical principle that things only appear to be existing in isolation. But the fire is the one thing that just consumes everything around it and becomes one with it. It's really beautiful to observe that.

[01:51:06] Alyson: It's one of, for sure, no question asked, one of my favorite things to do in life, is to just sit with the fire.

[01:51:17] Luke: Would you like to have a fire tonight?

[01:51:18] Alyson: Sure, sure. I have my integration call. I have things I actually have to do tonight, but this week, yes. And actually, I'd like to do it maybe in a couple of days, because remember I was telling you on our walk about the vows, and I want to do a prayer regarding these different vows.

[01:51:41] Maybe I would like to do it at the fire. So give me a couple days to wrap my head around that. But yeah, the last thing I was just going to say was I just love fire gazing and the medicine of it. And when you ask the fire a question and then gaze into it, the ways in which it answers you, whether through texture or shape or color or-- there's been countless times where I've seen animals, beings, dragons fully present.

[01:52:14] There's been a couple of times-- I don't take many pictures in general, in life, period. Especially hardly ever in ritual and ceremony. And a couple of times when I have at a certain fire at a ceremony, or just at a gathering with friends, I've captured, I've seen. You can see, whether you believe in magic or not. You can see that there was an owl face in the fire. So it's one of my favorite things. So perfect way to close the episode--

[01:52:47] Luke: Beautiful. Fire.

[01:52:48] Alyson: And feed our widow girl Cookie, because she's hungry girl.

[01:52:51] Luke: Let me stand next to your fire.

[01:52:54] Alyson: Okay, honey. There's your next song you can learn. You've been learning some new ones, I've noticed.

[01:52:59] Luke: Yes. Yesterday I learned Sweet Virginia, one of my favorite Rolling Stone song.

[01:53:04] Alyson: It's a real country sounding one.

[01:53:05] Luke: It's very country. It's on Exile, Exile on Main Street. One of their best albums. And it's surprisingly easy. It's the same three chords in the guitar. I had no idea. You listen to songs your whole life and it sounds like, oh, that must be hard. And then sit down and play it. And it's like, that was it? Of course, the execution is one thing, but you the base idea. Yeah.

[01:53:29] Alyson: We have a lot of cool topics that we didn't get to, so we will, I'm sure, get to those soon. I think our next one will be an AMA. So if any of you listeners have any questions for Luke, and I guess if you have a question for me, you could toss it in there because I will be the one asking him the question. So yeah, send those in. Where do they send those, if they have them?

[01:53:52] Luke: Where do people send questions? Yeah, social media.

[01:53:57] Alyson: DM you.

[01:53:57] Luke: Yeah, DM on any of the social posts on Instagram @lukestorey. YouTube, youtube.com/lukestorey. By the way, folks, speaking of YouTube, recently over the past couple months, we revamped and upgraded our whole Life Stylist podcast video template.

[01:54:17] And so now on YouTube, we're really putting a lot more emphasis into that. So now there's a trailer for every episode that gives you a really good idea of what the vibe is and what we're talking about. And of course, there are shorts, and then the full one to three hour interviews. So I invite people to get over to YouTube.

[01:54:35] And also when you're over there, do everyone a favor, especially me, and smash that subscribe button because YouTube basically shadow bans you unless you're continually getting new subscribers. So no one's ever going to see these conversations that I put a lot of heart and soul into, and Alyson does too when she's here, unless you guys are doing that. Then the algorithm machine elves will recommend it to other people.

[01:55:01] Alyson: I like that, the machine elves.

[01:55:03] Luke: Yeah. That's a nice way to put it.

[01:55:06] Alyson: Yeah.

[01:55:07] Luke: So yeah, that's where the questions would go.

[01:55:10] Alyson: The little hobbit.

[01:55:10] Luke: We do our best to keep track of all the comments and questions and answer them as much as possible.

[01:55:16] Alyson: Activate the YouTube hobbit.

[01:55:17] Luke: Yeah, the YouTube. I've ignored YouTube this whole time, and then I'll see, I have a really interesting interview with Rick Rubin or Joe Dispenza or something. And I rarely look. It's like every couple of years and I'll go look at the video and it's like 56 views. I'm like, "What? This is an epic conversation."

[01:55:34] And then I see Jay Shetty next to it, 27 million views with the same guy. I am going like, "What? I must not have the code cracked here on the YouTube presence." But it's just not something I focused on. I've always focused on the audio experience. But we do have all this expensive equipment and lighting, and we do our best to make the videos look and sound professional and interesting.

[01:55:54] So I'd love for people to be able to watch them. And for those of you that don't do YouTube, by the way, on Spotify you can actually watch the video versions of these shows too.

[01:56:04] Alyson: Wonderful. We'll catch you again soon, and in between now and then you'll have a lot of other episodes released with other people.

[01:56:12] Luke: Hot damn.

[01:56:13] Alyson: All right.

[01:56:15] Luke: Thanks for joining me, honey. I love you.

[01:56:15] Alyson: You're welcome. Love you too.