[00:00:01] Alyson: Hello, everyone. Blessed day after Christmas, and welcome to the Life Stylist Podcast. I am Alyson Charles Storey joined by my very handsome husband, whose show this is--

[00:00:16] Luke: Ah, shocks.

[00:00:17] Alyson: Luke Storey. And this is Episode 642. Should I reference the show notes this early?

[00:00:25] Luke: Yeah. Let people know where they can find links to everything that we talk about, anything they want to dive deeper into.

[00:00:33] Alyson: All right. You can find that at lukestorey.com/642. Or is that a backslash? I never know. Slash or back?

[00:00:43] Luke: Slash is good.

[00:00:44] Alyson: Slash, okay. Yeah. Welcome. I hope everyone's having a delightful holiday season. I always like this cozy, cheery time because I'm obsessed with our fireplace and the energy of fire, and so it gives me even more of an excuse to have it on all day, every day, and to cozy up. I like coziness.

[00:01:04] Luke: You do like coziness, which is funny because you don't like cold weather. You and I share that. Probably because you grew up in Indiana and I grew up at various times and freezing places like Colorado and Idaho. One thing I love about the holidays with you is that you demand that we get a Christmas tree, which I would never do if I was single.

[00:01:33] Alyson: Really?

[00:01:34] Luke: No.

[00:01:34] Alyson: The house would just look the same all year round.

[00:01:36] Luke: Yeah. I wouldn't even know. You know what I mean? With dates and stuff, you'd have to tell me, hey, today's Christmas. Like, oh, okay.

[00:01:46] Alyson: It's interesting because I think in some respects, I'm very chill and easygoing when it comes to holidays. I'm not like, I don't know. I think there's a wide-ranging spectrum of where humans fall in terms of how vitally important is to cover all bases. And then those, I guess, similar to what you're just saying, that just couldn't really care less and they wouldn't decorate, and there would be no significant change.

[00:02:14] I think I'm maybe somewhere in the middle toward the very chillax side of things, but I do love a cute, fat, little, pudgy Christmas tree. We do have some really cute ornaments, some of which I've had since I was a little girl. My family was very big on gifting ornaments. A lot of Hallmark Keepsake ornaments were circulated.

[00:02:40] Luke: Your mom's basement was full of them at one of our trips there.

[00:02:43] Alyson: Hundreds and hundreds, and I'm not exaggerating. Hundreds of ornaments, specifically Keepsake from Hallmark. So yeah, if there were money to be made from old-school Barbie or different cartoon-- what's that one, like Snoopy cartoon? I don't even know.

[00:03:05] Luke: Peanuts.

[00:03:07] Alyson: Yeah, yeah. I've had so many. So yeah, I like the Christmas tree. I'm not huge on gifts though. I went through many, many years where I don't like being told, like, because it's this time of year you're supposed to buy someone a present. My rebel archetype really resisted that for a very long time, and so I was just like, no one can tell me when I'm supposed to buy someone something.

[00:03:31] If I feel it in my heart to purchase a gift for someone, I'll do that when I feel that. I didn't like being told that when it gets to this time, that's when you have to buy something for someone. I hated that.

[00:03:43] Luke: You're better at it than I am with sending cards and things like that. I think probably by the time I moved out on my own, I just said, nobody buy me gifts. Never send me cards because I'm never going to remember to send them to you on the dates that I'm supposed to. So I think we have that in common.

[00:04:01] I like the spontaneous gifts. On the Christmas tree, one hot tip for listeners is-- and I'll find a link and I'll put it in the show notes, but I went to some length to find Christmas lights that, a, are red so, they don't fill your house with blue light. And also incandescent ones that don't flicker and create dirty electricity. So I'm glad you weren't picky that we have different colored lights and things. Because it's nice to have it on at night and not wreck your sleep.

[00:04:35] Alyson: It's funny, the reason I chuckled when you're describing that is because, I think it would be fun to have either the white lights or-- I've never really huge on the multicolored where it's like pink, blue, yellow. That's never really been my jam. But I think it would be nice some Christmases to not have just strictly red lights.

[00:05:04] The whole red light vibe, I get it. And I am grateful that we have that option in our bathrooms and in this hallway here. I get it, and it's very dizzying and nauseating to me and disorienting to me when the only lights on in the house are red lights. I cannot stand that.

[00:05:24] Luke: I know it's unfortunate. But when we need lights on, I can wear my Gilded blue blocking glasses.

[00:05:34] Alyson: Yes, the harmonious give and take of our marriage.

[00:05:36] Luke: I think you probably share that with a lot of people. I'm sure there are people listening to the show that are on one side of the aisle that are like, I want only red light at night like I do. And the people they live with are probably like, what the hell? This is annoying.

[00:05:53] Alyson: If there's one or two red lights on, I need somewhere in the vicinity, a non-red light to regulate my system. The other night when we came up to put the massage table up here and it was only red in the hallway, just instantly, I feel like I'm going to fall over sideways. It's very disorienting to me.

[00:06:16] Luke: That's where the balance of the amber incandescent come in. Those are good too. And in the psycho level, circadian biology ethos, even those have a little bit of green, so you wouldn't have those. But that's splitting hairs. I think if someone just had incandescent bulbs, you're pretty much winning the game. The red is like bonus level, next tier.

[00:06:49] Alyson: Yeah. But you don't really love the cozy cheer of Christmas?

[00:06:57] Luke: Oh no, I do. No, I totally appreciate.

[00:06:59] Alyson: You just wouldn't put in any effort to change up the decor.

[00:07:03] Luke: Yeah. I just forget and got other stuff going on.

[00:07:09] Alyson: I think it's nice even when there's just a few things, like some people like go full tilt and their inside of their house looks like a different house at Christmas time. We just have a few things up, so you can tell that--

[00:07:19] Luke: I love it.

[00:07:20] Alyson: Christmas is happening.

[00:07:21] Luke: I'm so glad that you do. The only thing about the Christmas tree that is challenging here in Texas, there were times when I lived in LA when I had a Christmas tree. It was when I lived with a girlfriend who, like you, wanted to have a Christmas tree, like a normal person. In LA you could get a living Christmas tree. So it would come in a pot in soil and then they'd deliver it, and you hang out with it for a couple months and then they'd take it away. When we go to the Christmas tree place, I just always feel bad that all these beautiful trees have been hacked off. I know they're grown for that purpose.

[00:07:58] Alyson: I think we also try to look out the best we can that they have reforestation efforts. I don't know. We do what we can.

[00:08:07] Luke: Some are more ethical than others.

[00:08:09] Alyson: Yeah. But yeah, to our best efforts, we haven't found a living tree option here.

[00:08:15] Luke: So heads up, if anyone is a entrepreneur in the Austin area. There's a great opportunity there for you once a year.

[00:08:23] Alyson: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:25] Luke: It'll take you 10 years to build the business because you got to grow the trees.

[00:08:29] Alyson: You have to be-- yeah.

[00:08:30] Luke: But I always thought that was cool. Because you water it and you take care of it. It becomes one of your little family members, like the rest of our house plants.

[00:08:37] Alyson: Yeah. We still tend to these trees in that way. We welcome it into our home, and we usually name it and thank it. And it's a very loving-- it becomes a part of our family. And I talk to it and make sure it's got the water it needs. And when its time has come, we thank it. Yeah.

[00:09:02] Luke: And then it gets thrown on the curb.

[00:09:05] Alyson: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[00:09:06] Luke: All right. What do we have today for our AMA?

[00:09:10] Alyson: We will end on that Scrooge note. That was a real Scroogey.

[00:09:15] Luke: I'm a realist. It's okay.

[00:09:18] Alyson: Oh God. Okay. Let's see.

[00:09:20] Luke: Another way to look at it would be that those farmed trees that end up on the curb would've likely never have existed at all if someone didn't go through the trouble of planting them.

[00:09:32] Alyson: And they might not have ever met a human. Maybe they were grown. And who say what's better or worse? But I'd like to think that-- I know trees are living sentient beings. I talk with them very regularly. I connect with them in very deep ways on a regular basis. And I'd like to think that I had a jolly good time being with our sweet family and in the energies of the holidays.

[00:09:59] And I'm fascinated when I think about the trees that exist on this planet who will never meet a human. Because you know that exists somewhere. There are some trees in some remote regions.

[00:10:14] Luke: Probably trillions of them.

[00:10:15] Alyson: And they will have never known what it feels like to hear a human speak, to have a human's palm put on its spark texture, to have a human hug it. I think about these things.

[00:10:32] Luke: Did I show you the video of the guy in the forest playing a flute and the trees react to the flute playing?

[00:10:40] Alyson: I've seen lots of videos similar, but you didn't send me that one.

[00:10:44] Luke: Oh my god. It's such a trip.

[00:10:46] Alyson: Yeah.

[00:10:46] Luke: Dude standing in the forest or jungle-ish forest. All the trees are just totally still. Starts playing his flute. They start moving and fluttering. Stops playing. They stop. I thought it was AI. I'm like, there's no way this could be real. But it was too amateur- looking to look like it was done with AI. There wasn't a lot of production effort put into it.

[00:11:13] Alyson: Yeah. That stuff is definitely real.

[00:11:15] Luke: So cool. Every time I take mushrooms outside, that's when I really realized the trees know what's going on.

[00:11:25] Alyson: For sure.

[00:11:26] Luke: Yeah. One could say it's the mushrooms talking, but I choose to believe that there's a lot going on that there many of us can't perceive in our normal waking.

[00:11:38] Alyson: Definitely. And I think when you start to do whatever type of conscious or spiritual practice where there's a direct intention within the practice where you are working directly with a tree or trees, then you for sure have direct firsthand experience and knowledge of them being very wise.

[00:12:05] When I guide shamanic journeys, which I've done countless times for thousands and thousands of people, there's different parts of the journey, but one of the main ones is seeing your tree and heading in the direction of your tree, connecting with it, really understanding that this is your tree, and then entering into the tree, and then that is the gateway into the different realms, and that happens for a reason. And the root systems and how they all talk to each other. Yeah, it's a whole, wild, beautiful world.

[00:12:45] Luke: Last time Zach Bush was on, he was-- and I wish I could remember exactly what he said, but he said something to the effect that it was either-- they've shown that pets know when you're on your way home. They pick up in the quantum realm. Something like that.

[00:13:03] When you're on your way home, your plants start to perk up. Or still cool, not as impressive, it could have been-- and we will link to that episode in the show notes, please, Jarrod. If it wasn't that, it was that when you walk in the house and you pay attention to them, they respond.

[00:13:22] Alyson: I think it's all of the above, but I know that clip, because I think it went quite viral. I was seeing him sitting in this chair that I'm sitting in when you guys were having that conversation, and I was seeing clips of that randomly on TikTok. And it wasn't really saying that it was your podcast, but I--

[00:13:39] Luke: That's why we put the mic flags in there.

[00:13:41] Alyson: Yeah, yeah. But if I remember correctly, it's something like as far out as 200 meters away.

[00:13:49] Luke: Yeah, it was impressive.

[00:13:50] Alyson: The plants in the home know that you're 200 meters out and you're getting close and they get happy that you're coming back home.

[00:13:59] Luke: Yeah. Super cool. Sometimes if I'm having a two-hour conversation with someone, I'm thinking about all kinds of other things. I'm trying to guide the conversation, and sometimes something really cool like that happens and I miss it because I'm thinking of the next question or whatever.

[00:14:17] It's different than-- the way I learn when I listen to other podcasts, I'm not doing anything else except listening. But that was one I was like, "You got to remember this. This was super cool."

[00:14:28] Alyson: Oh, you did remember that part?

[00:14:29] Luke: Well, I don't remember exactly what he said. I just remember like, bookmark this, note to self. Because it's really impressive.

[00:14:38] Alyson: Yeah, yeah. On that note, I could go in a couple of different directions here. One is more of the direction I think, of what Dr. Zach Bush what his lanes are. There's a question around that. Or I could really hit you with the most, simple chill one, which is from Sandra, and she asks, what are your predictions for the next 50 years?

[00:15:02] Luke: Oh man.

[00:15:03] Alyson: I love that one. We should just get that one going.

[00:15:05] Luke: Hitting it hard.

[00:15:07] Alyson: Sandra with the heavy hitters.

[00:15:09] Luke: Man, I don't know.

[00:15:10] Alyson: 50 years. You'll be over 100.

[00:15:13] Luke: Yeah. Wow, that's scary to think about.

[00:15:17] Alyson: I'll be wiping your bottom.

[00:15:19] Luke: Yeah, if I'm still kicking it. It brings to mind the interest/obsession some people have with longevity, how long you're here. It's a weird thing. The transhumanists have their version of it, and then some people that are into the health and biohacking space have their version.

[00:15:41] Alyson: I don't even know what transhumanist is.

[00:15:44] Luke: That's a belief that biological humans can merge with machines, essentially.

[00:15:55] Alyson: Say what?

[00:15:56] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:58] Alyson: There are people that want to do that.

[00:16:00] Luke: People that want to live forever.

[00:16:03] Alyson: Oh, wow. Wait, what? I've never heard of this in my life. I didn't even know this existed.

[00:16:09] Luke: I love that you don't pay attention to conspiracies. It's like when we were in Nevada City, I think I told this story on a prior episode, where there was a protest, political protest on the street, and Alyson's like-- we're at a stoplight and I could get the gist of what their issue was. But their signage was very ambiguous, I will say.

[00:16:34] Alyson: The very ambiguous protestors.

[00:16:36] Luke: Yeah, yeah. And then you were like, "What are they fighting for or against?" Yeah. I was like, it would be hard to tell. But then the funny thing was you had a conversation with someone in Nevada City who was like, "Oh, I don't know. There's a lot of the Reds moving in." Meaning Republicans or conservatives or something.

[00:16:56] And you go, "What's the deal? Which is the red and what's the blue? What does that mean?" I was like, it's so awesome that you don't know that. Because it's all a psyop anyway, the whole paradigm. But anyway, to the 50-year--

[00:17:08] Alyson: I've literally never heard of this.

[00:17:10] Luke: So I was going to say with the living forever or until you're 200, I wouldn't want to live any longer than God--

[00:17:22] Alyson: Be mindful of how you say this.

[00:17:23] Luke: Than God intends me to live or design me to live. If that's God's will, then I'll live until I'm 1,000. But I think it would be difficult. If you look at even a healthy 95-year-old, 105 year old, you're not at the top of your game.

[00:17:44] Alyson: Yeah. There are signs that you have lived a longer life.

[00:17:48] Luke: Yeah. So it's always been for me quality of life more so than quantity.

[00:17:55] Alyson: It makes me think of my Grandma Bernice. I have quite a few relatives, and I think you do too, who lived to 100 or very close to. And I was very close to my dear Grandma Bernice, and so I really should know exactly what age she transitioned. I'm pretty sure it was 98. And she had a really good quality of life for the vast majority of that.

[00:18:26] Luke: My paternal grandmother, my nana, lived until she was 99, and she was pretty solid up until the last couple years.

[00:18:34] Alyson: Yeah.

[00:18:35] Luke: Very mobile and cognitively capable and just chilling.

[00:18:43] Alyson: Yeah. I also want to stick with God's plan, and I'm just tripping out. I'm trying to go down a rabbit hole or not trying to go down, but because I'd never heard of transhumanism and that brief description you gave, I'm swirling over here. So I'm very perplexed. There's people that somehow they would find a way, or is there already a way that people work with technology or machinery?

[00:19:12] Luke: I'm no expert in the topic because I just think it's bizarre. In that expression of it, it's like a playing God kind of thing.

[00:19:25] Alyson: Yeah, it's weird.

[00:19:26] Luke: It's weird. So there's, yeah, brain chip implants.

[00:19:32] Alyson: Hell no.

[00:19:33] Luke: Taking your consciousness and putting it in a new body. It's a thing. It's sci-fi. A lot of the high-level tech people are into it, and it's very-- there's adrenochrome aspects of it. It's a weird thing. Anyway, back to the 50 years.

[00:19:55] Alyson: Original question.

[00:19:57] Luke: That's such a hard question. I have no idea. What I suspect on a positive note based on history, because the only way you can really have an idea of where things or humanity or the planet might be going is by looking at history, and over eons, thousands of years, consciousness as expressed through humans is on a consistent upward trajectory. From the dark ages to the human sacrifices, to the viking hodes, to slavery.

[00:20:36] There's been so many really dark passages for our species. But if you look at a more broad spectrum of time, things tend to get better, and people become more awakened. And I think right now we are definitely seeing the polarity of good and evil, for lack of a better term. The light and the dark.

[00:21:07] There's so many people that are waking up, and there's the anti-life, anti-human energies and people that have a stranglehold on humanity and have for a long time. Those systems, thankfully, seem to be crumbling. And the mirage of propaganda and mind control seems to be wearing pretty thin.

[00:21:32] Going back to what I was saying earlier about the left versus right paradigm. I think it's a really positive thing that people are seeing that statism, no matter which side you choose, is a losing game. And so of course I have no idea what will happen in the next 50 years, but there's definitely a clear sign that there's going to be a rise in technology and artificial intelligence, which could be neutral depending on what people do with it.

[00:22:06] But I think people will continue to remember who they are and awaken to their own capacity to self-govern. And my hope is that humanity at large will become increasingly less dependent on the state. And that people will lean more into self-governance and discovering their innate power. And remembering that the whole purpose of this whole game is to love.

[00:22:47] It's a pretty idealistic vision perhaps, because it seems like in this realm, we're always going to have the duality. And so if it was supposed to be a utopia, then it would be. It seems like Earth School has a lot of challenges and it has that duality so that it gives us a spectrum of choices so that we can come here and make decisions that either lower or raise our consciousness or create more karma or burn past karma.

[00:23:24] It seems to be a school, but I think over time, as I said, that the curriculum goes up a few grades every few hundred or few thousand words. And it seems right now we're in a real quickening where it's a sink or swim thing. So many people are waking up that the--

[00:23:45] Alyson: People are also short circuiting because--

[00:23:48] Luke: Yeah, we're--

[00:23:49] Alyson: They're just totally befuddled and lost.

[00:23:52] Luke: Yeah, it's the best of times and it's the worst of times. It's like half the world is absolutely psychotic and the other half is going, "Wow, we've been psychotic. I don't want to be this way. I'm going to wake up now."

[00:24:06] Alyson: I've noticed. I don't know if you have. And granted, I know part of it is just the Texas vibe. We've talked privately about the drivers here and just how, no shade, but the worst drivers I've ever seen. And I've lived in a lot of places. I feel like I see way more road rage and aggression on the roads in this past six, 12 months.

[00:24:30] It's like, what is going on? Just the people who haven't found healthy ways or paths or practices to be self-aware, self-regulate, manage their central nervous system, that's where I see a lot of the short circuiting. And because they haven't previously found those avenues to healthily tend to those aspects that are human aspects, then it just goes spewing and projecting in dangerous ways.

[00:25:07] And on the road is one place that I see it. I will see drivers-- granted, I don't really like to drive much anymore, and I am the first to admit I drive like a grandma. I never used to be that way, but I am now. So I stay in the right lane. That's my comfort zone. I don't really like to go that much above the speed limit.

[00:25:31] But the drivers, you would think-- I'm not going below the speed limit and I'm a great, safe driver, but they'll get so-- just the rage, and they'll be so aggressive about it. They'll come up on my trunk and then veer off in a really angry way to the left lane and then just slam on the gas. And I'm just like, "Okay, have a nice time with that." Have you been more aware of that?

[00:26:01] Luke: Objectively, people in Texas are psychotic drivers.

[00:26:07] Alyson: Yeah. It's so bizarre.

[00:26:09] Luke: I've driven in different countries, different states. The funny thing is here, 99% of the time they're driving a pickup truck. There's something about the mentality of people--

[00:26:22] Alyson: I don't know if it's the ego.

[00:26:23] Luke: It's a weird thing. Why are you in such a hurry? Where are you taking bales of hay? To an emergency at a ranch?

[00:26:33] Alyson: No, they're not because they never have bales in their truck.

[00:26:35] Luke: I could see why people drive trucks. It's not my steez. My dad always drove trucks because he's hauling horses and shit around. And I got a couple of homies. I think Josh Trent has a truck. I have a couple friends here who-- Cal, I think had a truck.

[00:26:51] I don't think they're psychos or drive like psychos, but there's something. Maybe guys with crazy high testosterone are attracted to trucks and they drive just very angrily and aggressively. But I agree with you, and to me, that's the polarity. It's like there's mental health and addiction and just complete nuttiness going on.

[00:27:21] Because people are so confused and as you said, don't know how to manage themselves. And we have generational trauma and trauma from this life and all the things. But at the same time, I feel like when it comes to spirituality, and you and I have talked about this a little bit, years ago I felt like I had some things I could share with people that were maybe new to people or of value.

[00:27:51] Because when I started learning them, they were new to me and were revolutionary in my life. I feel like every time I open a social media app, everyone knows all about spirituality. It's like so many people are waking up. It's become a trend, which some people complain about that.

[00:28:12] I think, hey, if you're going to have a trend, being spiritual is a great one to have. I'm sure everyone's at their own level of authenticity or embodiment with that. But hey, at least people are trying. But I think that we're at a major turning point right now as a species. And I'd like to think that more people are waking up than are losing themselves and remaining lost and asleep.

[00:28:39] And the thing about consciousness is that it's not a one-to-one ratio that moves the needle. David Hawkins used to talk about this all the time, where it's like you have, it could be 10 beings on the planet who calibrate over 700, and they counterbalance millions of people that are below 200, below the level of integrity.

[00:29:01] So it's like the power of consciousness at the higher states of love and joy and peace and equanimity are exponentially more powerful than their counterpart. So you don't need a majority of people to be awake, thankfully. So when we--

[00:29:20] Alyson: And also there are people on the spiritual path who are still operating well below 200.

[00:29:25] Luke: Oh, 100%. Yeah. There's a lot of wolfs in sheep's clothing.

[00:29:31] Alyson: One thing before we move on that also pinged in that I was curious about is with this prediction, and you were talking about the development of tech and the AI thing, but you were also talking about the progression of people waking up and-- I don't think you used the word sovereign, but that's how I interpreted it.

[00:29:53] And I find that a little fascinating because to me, the leeriness that I still have with AI-- and I'm not saying I don't ever put pop any question in the ChatGPT. It's not like I am that opposed to it. I've got the app a few months ago and I've worked with it a little bit, but I'm still just trying to tune into how I feel about it all.

[00:30:21] But I've heard horror stories of people going in-- and I don't think it's all made up, like AI propaganda to get people to not use it where they're like, people are having psychosis. I think there's legit stories of people who have not gotten into their own sovereignty at all and go into the ChatGPT or AI, and I think they do start to go cuckoo and do go into psychosis.

[00:30:50] So I don't know. I guess my question is, I just found it fascinating that you brought up those two examples of both lanes progressing, and yet I have somewhat feared-- one of the downfalls of AI and chat GPT is that people will start to lose their sovereignty and their self-governance because they're relying on some app or some "consciousness" floating in the tech ethers to tell them a certain ritual or tell them how to think. So I think it's interesting you think somehow, even though the tech is progressing, you still think the sovereignty will also progress.

[00:31:34] Luke: Yeah. That's where discernment comes in. There was a point at which I had jailbroken AI and was able to get past the censorship firewall and start asking it some meaningful questions. And it was being extremely honest. And it's such a rabbit hole to have. It's like the Akashic records when it's telling the truth.

[00:32:05] You can ask something. You could just spend hours and hours. And so when I was just giving some inquiries and asking things, I was asking, like-- I actually downloaded the transcript of this because it was so interesting. I was asking if Orange Man was complicit in the genocide with Pfizer and all these entities.

[00:32:31] And it just answered with such accuracy. It was terrifying the depth that it went to on how deep that goes. But I noticed it's so much information. My nervous system was like, "Okay, that's enough." It was like 30 minutes, and I'm like, "Okay." It could be so overwhelming and so not addictive, but it's enticing because there's a part of the mind that really wants to understand. Some of us are wired to really-- we want to know the truth. It's such a high value to me to know the truth.

[00:33:12] But I have some discernment. I'm like, "Okay, I'm going a little too deep, even in 30 minutes." So it's like, ah, put it away. And didn't do that again for a month or something. So I think like any tool, we have a shotgun in the closet. It's like, don't go play with the shotgun unless you have a reason to do so and you know what you're doing.

[00:33:30] So I think AI is a tool, but it's about the intentionality behind it. It's like, who's the person using it or the groups using it, and what's their level of integrity, their level of consciousness? I think that people that have goodwill toward humanity and toward the planet and toward life itself will increasingly start to use these tools in equal measure to those that are anti-life.

[00:34:06] I could see so many of our problems being solved with the assistance of AI. I use it to solve some problems and riddles that I'm working through. You know what I mean? Not existential ones, but just, I don't know, ways I can do things in the world. You can go and ChatGPT and be like, "Cool, how can I improve the ecology of my immediate neighborhood?" It's like, imagine if 50 million people did that. Hey, don't spray your lawn with glyphosate. Here's what's going to happen to your great grandchildren.

[00:34:37] Alyson: Don't use really toxic dryer pads that fumigate the entire neighborhood.

[00:34:41] Luke: So I think most tools, including all this tech that I barely understand are neutral. And it's like you can guide them in the direction that serves the greater good or serves selfish interest.

[00:34:55] Alyson: Last question on this 50-year prediction. Will there be flying cars?

[00:34:59] Luke: I think so. Yeah, I think so.

[00:35:02] Alyson: Will we live a more Jetsons lifestyle?

[00:35:05] Luke: I think so because as the systems that have been withholding information begin to crumble and more information leaks out in terms of free energy and anti-gravity and all these things that have been proven and discovered, what happens now is someone figures out, an engineer figures out how to run a car on water.

[00:35:32] They start talking about it, and within short order, they die of a suicide from five gunshot wounds to the back kind of thing. So it's like the powers that be, the parasitic system has a stranglehold on all innovation and technology and information, and therefore we don't make any real progress.

[00:35:59] Add to that, that the parasitic class in the United States are robbing us blind through money laundering schemes. And so the resources that are going to other countries, for example, we could solve the homelessness crisis and poverty in this country in six months. The amount of money we send to foreign countries for military strategy and so on, or God knows why we do it, could solve so many of our problems.

[00:36:33] So imagine if people were a-- I'm thinking like fantasy land. But a decentralized system of earnest and honest, well-intentioned people having some levers of influence over where our resources and innovation goes, flying cars, for sure. Speed rails, pollution, free means of travel, no chem trails.

[00:37:01] Alyson: Side note, you can't pay me to get into one of those no driver cars.

[00:37:05] Luke: Oh, hell no. Regenerative farming. That's just an emerging trend that's really positive. But imagine in 50 years if the entire world was like, oh, regenerative farming is the only way we're ever going to survive as a species. The whole world will be doing it. And we would probably see deserts become lush grasslands and forests and jungles.

[00:37:29] It's like the planet is always trying to heal itself, just like each of our bodies is trying to heal itself. It's always trying to find homeostasis. It's just that there are so many things that we do individually to our own bodies and collectively to the human community and to the planet that prevent it from regenerating and healing.

[00:37:48] Alyson: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:49] Luke: So I have a positive outlook on the future.

[00:37:53] Alyson: Wonderful. I'm glad you do. I do too.

[00:37:54] Luke: But there's always going to be evil. There's always going to be murderers and--

[00:37:58] Alyson: I have that as a topic for one of our next discussion episodes, is that earth is a planet of polarity.

[00:38:05] Luke: Yeah. I see it as a purgatorial realm. I do.

[00:38:10] Alyson: Yeah.

[00:38:12] Luke: It's a way station where you come to-- for those that are inclined to do so, you come to graduate to higher levels.

[00:38:23] Alyson: Yeah.

[00:38:24] Luke: Then maybe you go to other realms and maybe you just exist as a celestial being, and you--

[00:38:30] Alyson: What's the definition of purgatory?

[00:38:33] Luke: In between heaven and hell. It's a place of the in between. It's like a holding station. That's how I understand it.

[00:38:43] Alyson: How did Peanut end up here?

[00:38:46] Luke: Think about it.

[00:38:46] Alyson: She's pure heaven, little Cookie.

[00:38:48] Luke: Say we incarnated here and there was-- you have to have duality to have contrast. Otherwise, there's no choices. There's no free will.

[00:39:00] Alyson: There's no decision to make.

[00:39:03] Luke: Yeah, you would just--

[00:39:04] Alyson: You'd be like a blob.

[00:39:05] Luke: You would be an automaton, floating in pure consciousness and pure love.

[00:39:10] Alyson: Which is where we came from.

[00:39:12] Luke: Yeah. I'm all for that. I just don't see how it could exist in a realm where you have light, dark, hot, cold, here, there, up, down left, right. We live in a world of opposites, of polarity. But I can see, whether it's in 50 years or 50,000 years, a world where there's still polarity, but it's just not so extreme.

[00:39:39] Imagine human consciousness is at a place where there's still darkness and evil, but that darkness doesn't exceed, like you stealing someone's Amazon package from their porch. You would never kill someone. You would never drop a bomb on innocent civilians. You would never start a war.

[00:39:56] You would never abuse someone or physically harm someone. But maybe you're just a little dishonest here and there, and that's as bad as it gets. But there's still polarity. And then on the other side of that polarity where the worst thing any human being would do is maybe grab a chocolate bar from a store that you didn't pay for. Minor shoplifting is like the worst crime that anyone commits. Imagine the level of consciousness and love of the highest--

[00:40:26] Alyson: If that's the other end of the spectrum.

[00:40:28] Luke: You know what I'm saying? Then you have a world full of avatars that are walking around, like, poof, you're healed. Everyone is a mystic.

[00:40:38] Alyson: And also that God message that came to me repeatedly during the dark period for me, which was enlightenment is trying to reach you through equanimity. And that came in, and I knew it was a major God code because of the way that it landed and resonated and the great expanse of the field that it opened for me the instant that I heard that message being delivered to me and the quest that it sent me on, that I'm still on in a lot of respects.

[00:41:17] But that's what comes to mind. Enlightenment is trying to reach you through equanimity. And so it just brought to mind a world where more people have also been on their own version of that quest, that path of what is equanimity. Where am I at in terms of truly embodying that?

[00:41:42] And in a planet of polarity, in a world of this great spectrum, how am I experiencing myself and how am I experiencing life when something from the far reaches of the left end of the spectrum are a part of my life experience? And how am I experiencing myself and viewing life when things from the other end are entering my experience?

[00:42:10] Where am I in that sweet spot of being equanimity? And I also don't think equanimity is, you're just like this robot that doesn't feel on either thing. So it's this really intriguing exploration of earth is that equanimity.

[00:42:33] Luke: Yeah. I love that word, and it's like, I think at the foundation of equanimity is a surrendered state of being. It's like, say you have a moment of bliss and ecstasy. Equanimity means you're not attached to it. And then when you have a moment of grief or sadness or betrayal, you're also not attached to that. It's like a radical open-mindedness.

[00:43:06] Alyson: And you can be fully with that.

[00:43:08] Luke: 100%.

[00:43:09] Alyson: And you're not leaning to the right to get away from it, resisting it, trying to check out from that feeling that's trying to teach you something. Yeah.

[00:43:20] Luke: Going back to your drivers, it's like the reason that you are comfortable driving in the slow lane and you're not in a hurry to get anywhere says to me that you have a higher level-- and it's not better or worse. It's qualitative.

[00:43:40] Alyson: I drive in the slow lane.

[00:43:41] Luke: You're a driver with more equanimity than the guy in that Ford F-150 that is going probably nowhere really important that's just going absolutely psycho to get where he's going, probably one to three minutes earlier than you are.

[00:43:59] Alyson: And sometimes probably trying to offload some of the discomfort of whatever, whatever's happening inside of his body, his mind, something that happened early in the day, and he's just barreling down that interstate with his foot full throttle just trying to not feel.

[00:44:18] Luke: Here's a shout out to you listeners or viewers. If you go to the link, lukestorey.com/survey-- I keep forgetting to announce this. I'm going to do it now. This is where you can post questions for AMAs like this. You can give recommendations on guests that you'd like to have featured on the show, topics, genres of thought, etc. I would also like to know, we should put this on there, have you noticed in your state or country where you live that people that drive trucks drive way more psycho than normal people?

[00:45:03] people

[00:45:03] Alyson: Or recently, in the last six to 10 months, have you noticed an uptick in road rage or aggressive driving in general?

[00:45:10] Luke: We should add some questions like that just for my own and maybe own selfish curiosity. But in all seriousness, go to lukestorey.com/survey, and you'll have multiple choice options there. And all you do is just select what you want. It's really important to me that this show continues to evolve and serve those who listen.

[00:45:32] Otherwise, it's just like, well, what am I interested in? And obviously, if you want me to do a show on something that I know nothing about and have no interest in, then that's probably not going to happen. But I feel for the most part that I'm very aligned in terms of my passions and interests as many people who listen to the show. So I want your feedback, lukestorey.com/survey.

[00:45:58] Alyson: Okay, great. Let's mosey on over to a new question. There's a lot of really great options. I almost want to ask this just because their handle or their name is Extra Anchovies. That's the person who--

[00:46:15] Luke: Cool. Someone's really into DHA.

[00:46:17] Alyson: Oh my gosh.

[00:46:19] Luke: I wish anchovies tasted better because they're so good for you.

[00:46:22] Alyson: Oh my goodness.

[00:46:24] Luke: They make your breath stink for two weeks. I used to bring them on the plane when I was like really into the quantum biology stuff. And that didn't last long. If you want to make some enemies on a plane, bring your anchovies.

[00:46:41] Alyson: I think I got to digest their question. It's very long, and I think I got to come back to that because I want to make sure when I ask it, it makes sense.

[00:46:50] Luke: Okay.

[00:46:51] Alyson: I'll come back to you Extra Anchovies. It's not a you thing. It's a me thing. I just have to process what you're asking there.

[00:46:57] Luke: It's not you. It's me.

[00:46:58] Alyson: Yeah. We just went very broad, very grand scale. Talking about spectrum, let's go super specific and niche. An anonymous listener asks, "I've just finished my free trial with NuCalm and remembered you saying that you listened to a Dr. Joe Dispenza meditation over the top of NuCalm. I just wanted to know which meditation and which NuCalm track." Also, they remember you saying that you listen to the Doors and other music with NuCalm. "How do I access these?"

[00:47:30] Luke: Whoever anonymous is, they're an OG listener because that was many years ago. I started using NuCalm, I think around 2018. Been using it just about every day. I did it today.

[00:47:43] Alyson: I work with it as well. I really do like it.

[00:47:47] Luke: I never like to say things that aren't true. So if I say like, I do this every day, I want to mean it.

[00:47:54] Alyson: You have a witness-- your wife.

[00:47:55] Luke: I'm sure there's days I've missed NuCalm since 2018, but it's a many time a week thing. Let me put it like that. But in the beginning, this is when I lived in Laurel Canyon before you moved in, obviously. I had a hyperbaric chamber, which is really relaxing after the first 30 minutes or so. It just puts you in that theta, drooling zone.

[00:48:16] So I would stack things when I go on the hyperbaric chamber, different audio tracks. I would microdose ketamine. Sometimes I would just try to take myself into a really deep relaxation. And so at one point when I really got into the Dr. Joe Dispenza meditations, I was like, "These are great, but I also want to do a NuCalm." So I'd put earbuds in with whatever, either of them. Maybe it was the NuCalm and the earbuds, and then I'd put like headphones on top that.

[00:48:46] Alyson: Oh my Lord.

[00:48:47] Luke: And then I'd have my iPhone playing one, the iPad playing another, just to stack them.

[00:48:52] Alyson: You would do that. That's funny.

[00:48:55] Luke: I know for sure there was no method to my madness. What I did notice, and this person probably heard on that podcast, I think I just got lucky sometimes that they would be in the same key. So if the new contract was like [Inaudible], the background music of the Dispenza track happened to be in that same key or a harmony of that note. And so it wasn't, what do you call it? Discordant. And so I really found that to be useful. But I would just try that if you're so inclined. You got to have two devices, two pairs of headphones.

[00:49:32] Alyson: That's funny.

[00:49:34] Luke: Yeah, that's a little extra. But what I would look for is-- even if you know you're not a musician, you probably have an ear if something's like clashing. If you play two notes that are discordant, there's not going to be a unison note that's the same or a harmony note. You'll know if it sounds like shit to you, basically. And that would probably not be relaxing.

[00:49:56] Alyson: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:57] Luke: But my theory with it was if I'm using NuCalm to drop myself into a deep theta state, therefore I'm more, for lack of a better term, suggestible, programmable, which in this case, I want to be programmed with Joe Dispenza's messages. I would use it to go deeper with Joe Dispenza. So it's just experimentation.

[00:50:16] There's no methodology to it. The Doors track is, due to copyright issues, I'm assuming NuCalm hasn't and probably will never publicly release them. But Jim, just for his own personal use--

[00:50:34] Alyson: Jim Poole.

[00:50:35] Luke: Yeah. I guess made-- there's a playlist of different music. There's like an AC/DC one, a Van Halen one, a Steve Ray Vaughan one, and the Doors one. And it has the NuCalm Ignite track, which is the one that makes you super hyped. And he would listen to when he works out. He puts on like AC/BC, Highway to Hell or whatever. Underneath it is like this [Inaudible] that produces gamma waves. So I still listen to those sometimes. There's the Guns N' Roses ones. It's all great music. Yeah.

[00:51:11] Alyson: See, and then you have someone like me that hears that as an option and it's just like, "Are you out of your mind?" I'm thinking about, has this person even done these practices before? Maybe don't stack until you've done just one. It drums up all--

[00:51:30] Luke: No, it's fine. I wouldn't recommend taking ketamine and getting in a hyperbaric chamber.

[00:51:34] Alyson: That too.

[00:51:35] Luke: But as far as the audio tracks, yeah, I can see no harm coming from that.

[00:51:41] Alyson: Yeah.

[00:51:42] Luke: As long as the tones are right.

[00:51:46] Alyson: But one could argue that you do want to be very wise about the lyric choices.

[00:51:55] Luke: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. For the music.

[00:51:57] Alyson: Yeah.

[00:51:58] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:51:59] Alyson: Like you mentioned Highway to Hell.

[00:52:02] Luke: Yeah, those tracks, you're not relaxed. You're hyped. I don't think you would be as impressionable as you would if you're in theta, if you're in a really open, neuroplastic kind of state.

[00:52:19] Alyson: Those are just important details to remember.

[00:52:21] Luke: Yeah, totally. Totally.

[00:52:22] Alyson: Also, important details. Cookie, no bites. No, mama's watching. She's getting--

[00:52:27] Luke: Maybe time to give her some element CBD.

[00:52:30] Alyson: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. While we're talking about some of our favorite things.

[00:52:34] Luke: Was that the end of anonymous's question? I covered--

[00:52:36] Alyson: Yeah. It was just very, very specific.

[00:52:38] Luke: I love that question too, because that's-- I probably just mentioned that many years ago, briefly, in an episode. I love when people catch funny things like that because I forget about it and I go, "Oh yeah, that's cool. I should start doing that again."

[00:52:51] Alyson: But yeah, what are some of our other favorite things other than Nucalm?

[00:52:55] Luke: Yes, latest discoveries. We'll make a new part of the show, and it'll be like Luke's Latest. Because I discover cool shit all the time. And when it's new to me, oftentimes it just came out and so people might not know about it yet, because sometimes I found out about things from the people that make them. And I want to share cool stuff with people. So I have my grab bag here. My friend, Mansal, who's been on the show before-- Cookie's, really interested in this surprise here.

[00:53:32] Alyson: There's a testimony.

[00:53:33] Luke: Mansal Denton was on the show a few years back, and he has an outfit called Sacred Hunting. And so I went on a hunting trip with a number of colleagues and friends here from Austin. And I did a show with him about that. I've talked about that trip on a number of different episodes. It was extremely meaningful and profound.

[00:53:53] But Mansal is a guy who didn't grow up hunting, is not his steez. He found it and is really invested in the ethical approach to eating meat. I think he's like Daniel Vitalis, similar thing. Just not down with farm-raised animals, no matter how well you do it.

[00:54:20] So he has a very unique and beautiful relationship to the land and also has spent a lot of time with native American cultures and learning their life way and how they approach using animals as sustenance and so on. So he comes from a, not growing up as a hunter, learning about it in a very ethical and spiritually led way.

[00:54:46] And so he reached out to me a few months ago and was like, "Hey, I created this brand called Real Provisions, and it's so dope. I'm actually going to invest in this company. Full disclosure. I haven't yet, but I'm going to. So what he has done, which is really cool and unique is he's created a jerky meat product line that is made from axis deer who live in Hawaii.

[00:55:15] And they're not native to Hawaii. I believe they're from India originally. We have them in Texas too. But for any carnivore people and meat people, or hunters, everyone knows Axis Deer is the most delicious red meat on the planet. And so he created Real Provisions to actually assist with the ecology in Hawaii, because the animal gets out of control, like many things do on islands, especially if it's non-native.

[00:55:46] And so it is, I would say, the most ethical meat product you can buy because these animals live their best life, free and wild, until they are very humanely and ethically hunted. And the government of Hawaii supports these hunting measures and the project and everything because there needs to be some culling in order to keep the ecological balance.

[00:56:09] And so the most delicious red meat you can get, to me, wild game is just inherently the most nutritious because the animals are eating real food that they forage in the wild. And so what these animals are eating in Hawaii, anyone knows Hawaii is a very lush, tropical place. And so the nutrient density of the plant life that they're eating is much higher than even a grass fed cow that's eating alfalfa.

[00:56:41] They're eating a mono crop, which would never happen. I guess there's free range cows and things like that, but the nutrient density is incredible with what Mansal and Real Provisions is doing. Another thing they did that's really cool, and that's what you have in your hand that Cookie's obsessed with is they've infused organ meat, so heart and liver into some of the formula.

[00:57:06] That one there is a lot of heart and liver where I think two strips of this jerky, it's probably equivalent, don't quote me on this, but half a bottle of liver capsules or something. This one tastes really good. I had to keep this one because I knew I wanted to talk about it on the podcast, so I haven't opened it.

[00:57:28] I could go through a whole bag of this, so I think it's delicious. But Mansal mentioned to me that they're making one that just has much less of the liver and heart, which no one would even know it's in there in terms of the palate. But the thing with organ meats is they're the most nutritionally dense part of any animal that you eat.

[00:57:52] And that's why in the wild, if you watch the nature channel and you see a pack of coyotes, wolves, lions, whatever, go after a ruminant animal, what they're going to do is they're going to open them up and they're going to eat the organs first. It's like animals instinctively know that's where the juice is.

[00:58:12] So that's where you get all the bioavailable minerals, vitamin A. Things that are really difficult to get in the human diet are so abundant in organ meats. The challenge with organ meats is that, as you know, over the years I've gone to the farmer's market and I get the raw, grass-fed beef liver, and then I freeze it and make little cubes and I get on it for a while and really committed. And then it ends up turning into a moldy science experiment.

[00:58:38] Alyson: I have discovered those in our fridge before.

[00:58:40] Luke: Because I just can't stay in the habit. There are some good encapsulated, desiccated organ meats that come in capsules.

[00:58:48] Alyson: You to take so many.

[00:58:49] Luke: Yeah, but who wants to take a handful of 20 capsules? So up until now, my friend, Alex at Berski, he's doing something similar in a cool way, but not with wild animals. But he's using organ meats and stuff. So I think it's a great idea. But I just love Mansal as a human being. He is just a very heart-centered, spiritual, high integrity guy, and he really cares about the welfare of animals and the level of cruelty involved in making food out of them, which is always-- I used to be a vegetarian.

[00:59:24] This is like, always been an issue for me as someone who I just feel better when I eat meat. But even if we go to the farmer's market and I get beef from the rancher and I talk to him and get to know him, I don't know, I haven't been to the farm. Am I seeing what really happens? What happens on--

[00:59:41] Alyson: Sometimes we go to the farm.

[00:59:43] Luke: We have been. We've been to the Force of Nature. I forget what their farm's called. I've been to some, but I can't say that all the meat I eat, I really, really know what's going on. So with Mansal and what they're doing in Hawaii, it's just incredible.

[01:00:00] Alyson: It even says on the back above the nutrition facts, "This is a sacrament."

[01:00:05] Luke: Yes.

[01:00:05] Alyson: Yeah, you can feel the care and consciousness.

[01:00:11] Luke: Yeah, the whole ethos behind it, I think is what-- and that it just tastes hella good and it's just incredibly nutritious.

[01:00:19] Alyson: Also, I feel like more companies should do the little QR code where you can just zap it if you turn it around, and you can check the--

[01:00:29] Luke: Oh yeah, yeah. That's right.

[01:00:30] Alyson: I wish more brands did that.

[01:00:33] Luke: I'm glad you mentioned that. It's like I would do it. Just like, why I want to invest in this company? Because I'm just like, "Wow. Someone's thinking of everything." He also sends batches to get them tested for heavy metals and microplastics and also glyphosate.

[01:00:51] That's the thing with some like organic meat. There could be contamination in the feed where the animals are actually eating stuff that has glyphosate in it. So yeah, he's going just next level. And I didn't even know that they had the QR code, but you can scan and see the lab results. So super clean wild meat. Yeah, there's a different energy to wild game.

[01:01:18] Plus it's just like these are animals that God made. Not to get too esoteric, but cows aren't a real species. They're interbred. They're like hybrids of an orac. Nature doesn't just make cows, like it makes elk, deer, antelope, etc., which is an interesting thing. I've just always liked the idea of eating an animal that has been unadulterated in terms of its biology and DNA, and axis deer, God made them that way.

[01:01:52] Humans didn't have to breed them in order to get them under control. Bison is the same thing. You can ranch but they're not domesticated. They're still wild. Even if you managed to get them in a pen and keep them there. So if you can't eat this, bison, I think is the healthiest in terms of just vitality. Okay. So there's that. Then I'll let you talk about this one because, well, it's our friend, Ksenia, but you knew her before I did.

[01:02:21] Alyson: Oh, we're trying to stretch to reach. Yeah, we can both share about it. It finally just released, my dear friend, Ksenia Avdulova. I've known her for, oh my gosh-- doing some quick math. At least it's all a decade. We go back to my New York City days when she also used to live there.

[01:02:44] So yeah, she's been a dear sister for a long time. And there's this whole beautiful, deep, potent, wild story as to how this all came to be. But her speaking of integrity and ethical, her version of that in a cacao brand called Wana Hey, is now available to the world. And yeah, I'm just so proud of her because the packaging is so beautiful.

[01:03:16] Luke: Show your camera the branding. I love that.

[01:03:19] Alyson: Probably like [Inaudible]. Yes. Isn't she lovely?

[01:03:22] Luke: She crushed it.

[01:03:24] Alyson: Truly.

[01:03:26] Luke: I don't know the backstory, but I feel like it happened fast because last time we were with her, she just had her kind of samples and was pulling it together.

[01:03:33] Alyson: We were getting the home-tested, the home brewed. What was also cool is she reminded me when she sent our first order here to the house that we just got, I don't know, maybe last week. But she sent this sweet little card with it. And she says, "Ally, I hope--" I don't think she'll mind I read this on air. Hi, Ksenia. She says, "Ally, I cannot believe you and Luke are one of the very first people to experience one of the first iterations of Wana Hey in Peru. And now we're here."

[01:04:10] Luke: Oh, that's right. She left some and it took us like a week to find the guy up on the hill living.

[01:04:17] Alyson: In the highlands. Yeah, the Andan Highlands. Yeah. She had been in the same region of Peru. Literally, she left the region the day before we arrived there. So it was just this whole wild--

[01:04:32] Luke: That was wild. Because we're in the middle of freaking nowhere.

[01:04:36] Alyson: Oh yeah. Very high up there and very remote region, and yeah, this was not planned by us. We just hopped on a call, and she was like, "Hey, I have something to tell you. I'm heading to Peru." And I was like, "Wait a second. Luke and I are heading to Peru. Where are you going and when?" And so it was super trippy. She was going basically to the same place the week before us, leaving the day before we got there.

[01:05:02] And so she left a couple of surprise gifts for me when we would get up to this very special place, and one of said gifts, it wasn't packaged. She had not gotten the branding and the packaging and the marketing in place. It was not at all this version of it. It was the, like she said on the card, a first iteration.

[01:05:26] But she left us a large piece of this cacao. And it was the perfect timing because we were then leaving that remote region to go up even higher. And cacao was so grounding and nourishing. And I remember both of us, when we got back on the bus to go up even higher, we were sitting in the back of the bus so grateful to have this piece of cacao to satiate and ground us on this pilgrimage that we were on.

[01:05:55] Luke: Especially drinking a lot of Wachuma over the course of many days. I find Wachuma and cacao have a really beautiful synergistic relationship.

[01:06:08] Alyson: Yeah, yeah. It's been a really cool voyage, and you can go to-- oh look, I'm reading this at 2:22. I feel like that means something, but you can go to wanahey.com to hear the whole really deep, cool story as to how this all happened. It came from her "stumbling" upon a spiral shape on one of her nature walks.

[01:06:34] And she was in a very, I think it's safe to say, a darker, very deep time in her life. Yeah, this whole birthing emerged from it. I love what comes in this bag form, the Wana Hey cacao rose. And I'm really into it. She's doing things very uniquely. It's basically a bag of all of these sweet little rose shaped, molded cacao pieces. And when I make it for you and I in the morning for two people, I usually put in four to six of the little roses. And I find that to be perfect.

[01:07:19] Luke: To clarify, this isn't like a candy bar.

[01:07:22] Alyson: No, I am eating a bite now.

[01:07:24] Luke: But you make a drink out of it.

[01:07:26] Alyson: Yes, yes. And you can also eat it like I just did.

[01:07:30] Luke: One thing I like about this, you can get some really high grade ceremonial cacao, but it usually comes in a big brick, and I don't make it that much just because it everywhere. It's hard cut it. I cut too big of a piece off and the little chips go everywhere and shit. What she's doing is cool, but it's also cool because you can just like drop them in hot water and mix it up and you have an instant drink, which is cool.

[01:07:56] Alyson: And then also available as her spiral bar. I knew you would like this. You haven't seen this.

[01:08:01] Luke: Oh, that's dope. No, I haven't.

[01:08:02] Alyson: Yeah. I wanted to surprise you with that.

[01:08:03] Luke: That's cool.

[01:08:05] Alyson: And it comes in this really beautiful--

[01:08:06] Luke: It's like a little labyrinth.

[01:08:09] Alyson: Yeah. And that's the symbol and the energetic--

[01:08:13] Luke: Is this one meant for eating or drinks?

[01:08:16] Alyson: It's both.

[01:08:18] Luke: You shouldn't have shown me that because I'll probably crush the whole thing.

[01:08:21] Alyson: You could take a bite. It's just so grounding.

[01:08:23] Luke: I'll wait till we're done.

[01:08:25] Alyson: But anyways, yeah, this is-- I don't know what else you want to--

[01:08:30] Luke: That's all. It's a cool, new discovery and a friend, and she's a single mom. I don't know, man. I know how hard it is to create something and bring it to market, and when someone does it on their own, it's even more impressive. It's one thing if you're able to raise a bunch of money and just create a company out of thin air. God bless people that are--

[01:08:53] Alyson: Yeah. She's done it all herself.

[01:08:55] Luke: God bless people that are in that position, but I know she's not. So yeah, I just love supporting her, and she did something super cool and unique.

[01:09:03] Alyson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Again, I love that back to back. They're just these really mindful, integrity-filled conscious people that we both personally know and we're both personally friends with. Because even in the small details, this cool card came in the spiral bar and on the back she poses the question, if your heart spoke its truest prayer to the universe right now, what words would flow through you?

[01:09:34] And so that's on the back. And then there's some messaging on the front. I also really love this concept. You didn't find her, she found you, speaking of Wana Hey. I love that vibe. And another one of her ethos or brand taglines is Feel More Root Deeper, Rise Softer. So yeah, good job, Ksenia. So proud of you.

[01:10:01] Luke: Epic.

[01:10:02] Alyson: Yeah. And it tastes great too. Yeah, it's sourced really beautifully and--

[01:10:09] Luke: And has lucuma in it too.

[01:10:11] Alyson: Yeah, yeah. Some of it has that. And I need my glasses to read the exact ingredients, but this has some version of rose in it. Yeah, it's really lovely.

[01:10:28] Luke: Sweet. Okay, last one. Now this is not a new discovery, but it's one that I've known of for a few years, but then I run out because I use it so much. It's super annoying when I run out and then it takes me a long time to order it. So I just ordered a shitload of it, which I'm hoping will last a little bit longer.

[01:10:49] And that's my friend Adam, speaking of this guy who had an idea and bootstrapped his own brand. He lives in Florida, and it's Element Health that make the CBD products. And I feel like the CBD space is just like, oh my God. It's so played out. Over the years, so many brands have sent me their CBD products, and yeah, there's a few that are good but Adam's are really the only ones that I can feel.

[01:11:27] CBD is supposed to make you feel chill and relaxed and ease your pain and help you sleep, all the claims that it has. I don't really feel from most products, even the ones that are legit, that I've vetted and I'm like, "Okay, they're doing everything right." I don't know what homie's doing, but they're strong as shit. And so even the pure CBD, this one here, this liquid extract, the full spectrum CBD oil, this is the maximum strength of course.

[01:11:55] I mean a dropper full of that and it's like I'm just in the melt zone. And then he's got gummies that I really like. And the ones that are the green ones that are just pure CBD, I'll take like one of those in the morning. And I don't feel like tired or like I'm high or anything at all. It's just kind of like, I don't know, I'm able to focus and just kind of do my thing, but just a little less of anxious stimulation feeling.

[01:12:25] And then he's got this one, which is extreme potency. This one has CBN, another cannabinoid. And it has three milligrams of THC, which is very little. I would forewarn anyone that tries these, like if you ate enough of these, you'd probably be high as shit. So I only ever take like half of one of these because I don't like the feeling. Just personally, I don't like the feeling of like being high on cannabis, but like half of one of those and a full one of those before I go to bed is incredible for sleep and just helped me to wind down. Because as you know, I'm like super hyper at night. I'm super energized.

[01:13:04] Like 10:00 PM is like my peak energy of the whole day. I'm just weird like that. So these have been one, as I said, I've been using for a long time, but I'm not just like, okay, I need to just keep these in stock because they really help my quality of life, especially after I'm in a pause from the book. I'm waiting for my editor to give my edits back.

[01:13:23] So this has been a huge tool of my decompression and just getting out of that like frantic deadline zone. And then this is the CBD. I don't know if you've ever connected the dots, but this is the one that really works on Cookie. He has a pet formula and just like my experience with God bless the other CBD brands, I don't really feel it.

[01:13:44] When we've traveled with Cookie, we always give her CBD before getting on the plane, and the other ones like don't really do anything. She still is pretty energetic. So this is the one-- for the record, just memorize the bottle. This is the one I keep in my backpack. Then when we're in the terminal, we'll be like, give her a treat with some of the CBD on it.

[01:14:05] Funny thing about it is Cookie-- I don't know if all dogs would like this. She hates the taste of any and all CBD. Like last night I gave one because she was having a flare up with her allergies and stuff and I put some coconut smoothie, which she loves, is obsessed with in her bowl. And then I dribbled some of this CBD on it and she wouldn't eat it.

[01:14:27] I had to put like a couple drops of fish oil in there to entice her. So interestingly enough, my pet, our pet hates it, but it's incredible for just when she gets an allergic kind of flare up and gets itchy and uncomfortable and inflamed. It's really good for that. And then also if we take her to events, sometimes we'll give her a couple drops of that, getting on the plane travel anytime she gets like, kind of anxious and hyper.

[01:14:53] It's just incredible. So I just wanted to give Adam some love because appreciate it so much. And I think that's all I have in my grab bag.

[01:15:04] Alyson: It's a good Christmas grab bag.

[01:15:06] Luke: We'll link to that stuff and the prior-- I've done a podcast with Adam too about his CBD and he explains how they don't use hexane, like there's no pesticides. They test for heavy metals, glyphosate. It's like super clean doing all the right things

[01:15:19] Alyson: And same thing with Ksenia. All three of these brands, like if you go-- if those aspects are very important to you, you can go to all of their websites and they are very transparent and break down like all of these things.

[01:15:33] Luke: I mean, I don't use anything unless it's-- that's like a given to me that the brand has to have figured out that shit and made sure that their manufacturing and end product is non-toxic and follows all the right guidelines. But for some people that are new to me or to you, that's just know you can go learn all that yourself. But I wouldn't talk about anything unless it passed at least my standards, which are pretty high.

[01:15:58] Alyson: True that. All right, so I'm going to give Extra Anchovies.

[01:16:06] Luke: My foot fell asleep.

[01:16:07] Alyson: Are you okay?

[01:16:08] Luke: Yeah, I'm good. I can still talk--

[01:16:13] Alyson: Ready for the extra anchovies?

[01:16:14] Luke: I just got to move my ankle a little.

[01:16:16] Alyson: I read it a couple of times, and I think now I understand what they're getting at. At first it was a little, I was just like, wait, what? So just hang in there. Extra Anchovies says, I'm pushed over and over again to learn this one big thing.

[01:16:34] Luke: Ooh. Okay. Not a pressure.

[01:16:35] Alyson: When I get close to that one big thing, my body experiences this overwhelming stress to the point where they become very ill. Just today, they imagined that they should give up trying to meet their dharma and even wondered if it's their time to go having failed. So their question is, can we choose to drop out from the inevitable lesson? It hurts too much.

[01:17:07] Luke: Hmm.

[01:17:07] Alyson: So, yeah, you see why I had to read a couple times because they don't ever specify what this one big thing is.

[01:17:14] Luke: It sounds like it's something related to their dharma. It's like a path that they want to walk, but when they get close to this path, they're triggered and it becomes symptomatic.

[01:17:23] Alyson: It seems to me that yes, it's some sort of pattern or a narrative or lesson that seems to continuously show up because it says that they're pushed over and over again to learn this one big thing.

[01:17:37] Luke: Oh, I'm very familiar.

[01:17:38] Alyson: And then when they try to lean into this decoding, deciphering that, body gets overwhelmed to the point where they become very ill. So it's an interesting-- yeah.

[01:17:51] Luke: There's a lot of complexity to that one. And of course, I don't ever consider my answers advice. I always just try to tie it back to my own experience and speak from my own experience. And if I don't have experience with something, I won't speak to it.

[01:18:06] Alyson: And also when we don't know the full context, we don't have them sitting here.

[01:18:10] Luke: Yeah, it's a bit tough. But let's play around. Maybe we could take a stab at it. And if you have anything to add, please do.

[01:18:19] Alyson: I do.

[01:18:20] Luke: Good. In my experience, patterns that are what we would call negative or painful have generally kept reoccurring in different relationships, different jobs, different circumstances, until I've been willing and able to get to the root cause of that particular thing.

[01:18:52] So for me, say, in relationships, this would be one low hanging fruit example. Historically in romantic relationships, I was very avoidant and afraid of intimacy and just not available for depth. And there was a part of me that wanted to be, but it was just really uncomfortable to me.

[01:19:20] And so a pattern that would come up for me is I would get into a relationship, it would get to a certain level, and there would be more kind of accountability and commitment asked of me. And I was terrifying. And so I would run basically. And that wasn't doing myself or anyone else any favors. So that would be a kind of trigger that was reoccurring because there was something that I was being called to move forward into in terms of my own healing, my maturity and my development, right? I wasn't being triggered in a way where, say I was, I kept getting into abusive relationships because that pattern went back to early trauma.

[01:20:08] It was, you could say it was early, I don't know, lowercase t trauma or just neglect, things like that, that I experienced as a kid. There's reasons behind it, but that would be the type of thing that I would want to lean into, which I did eventually. You're sitting right here as my wife.

[01:20:27] I don't avoid shit with you. I'm like, let's go as deep as we can go, because I've developed some discernment. I know you're a safe person to go deep with, and I trust you impeccably-- what's the word? Implicitly, explicitly. I forget what the word is, but I trust you hella. So let me try to just make sense of this.

[01:20:50] So it's like that would be a case where I keep entering into a similar dynamic or scenario based on patterns. I'm having a reaction, sort of an automated response that's not serving me or anyone else. The answer to that in my case wouldn't be to just become a recluse and like a sexual anorexic or like go full avoidant and just go live on my own.

[01:21:21] The answer is like, wow, I really need to lean in until I figure this out and I can get to the root of it so that I can develop my capacity for trust and intimacy and be open to the expression of love, receiving love and giving love, right? So that's the kind of pattern for me that I would be, there's something in my soul that's like, you're not living to your full capacity and potential here.

[01:21:46] God wants something more for you and God is putting it in front of you over and over again to try to wake your ass up. And so that would be one that I did and would continue to lean into, wow, I need to overcome this by continuing to work on it. Whereas say I was abused as a child physically or verbally, and I keep recreating that pattern by taking jobs for employers that treat me like shit and keep abusing me.

[01:22:20] That kind of pattern is one that, and maybe I think it's my dharma to work in this particular field or for this particular person, and I'm sacrificing my own integrity and wellbeing, trying to learn the lesson by-- in a masochistic sort of way of being punished or punishing myself. The answer to that for me would not be to keep engaging in those type of dynamics of relationships to learn the lesson.

[01:22:47] That would be a case where I would need to disengage, use whatever modalities are appropriate for me to get to the root of that issue, whether it's ayahuasca or meditation or therapy or whatever, to dismantle the foundation of that wound and that trauma, whatever it is at the core, that core wound, then I'm going to stop magnetizing or gravitating toward those dynamics that fit-- where the key fits the lock of that trauma, that unhealed issue within myself. So that would be my broad answer.

[01:23:23] Alyson: And that's the fork in the road though that it's so imperative to be able to have a proper sniffer on yourself or whatever your gifts might be. See sniffer, just body intelligence alerting you to, when you're at that fork in the road, like being able to tell in this particular scenario that Extra Anchovy is speaking of, is it path A or is it path B?

[01:23:53] Because discernment-- and I mean, I guess one could chalk it up to, it's just all a part of the life learning is figuring that stuff out as you go and you get more and more adept then and being able to figure out, okay, and this thing that's presenting. Where it's kicking up, there's a triggering, it's kicking up something within me.

[01:24:21] And then being able to tell, oh, I know this map. I know what this texture is. I have already gone on this merry-go-round enough. And because of all that I just said, I know that this is a situation that I need to put a healthy boundary down instantaneously. I know what this is. I've been there, done that, and I am choosing healthier for myself.

[01:24:57] And it's like a lesson more of not stepping into self-sacrifice anymore. It's learning a lesson of how to put an uncomfortable boundary down. It's learning a lesson of choosing yourself. And you are meant to lean or step away from it, verse the other path that you described where it's like, yeah.

[01:25:25] When you talk about all the different spiritual traditions, there's lots of different terms for this, but one is shaman sickness, and it's the other path where you are being led and deeply called for overall healthy reasons into a path where you are being called to continue embarking down and stepping down.

[01:25:55] Because if you can find your way through the darkness and the discomfort, what is on the other side of that is, oh my gosh, this exaltation into this greater expanse of knowing yourself, a greater expanse of your spiritual gifts coming online, of loving yourself more fully as a human.

[01:26:21] The possibilities for what's on the other side of walking through that discomfort are endless. but it's two very different feelings, textures. And I think, yes, your intuition can alert you to which is which. And also sometimes you can only figure out which is which through life experience. And so I don't know--

[01:26:46] Luke: Yeah, it's tough without more detail and context, but I think you and I are grokking the same overall predicament, which is, is the growth in leaning in or, is the growth in leaning out? And that's something that only one can really discern for themselves.

[01:27:06] Alyson: Only Extra Anchovies knows.

[01:27:08] Luke: Yeah. But what I would add to that, and it's crazy that I still forget this so much myself, is how powerful prayer is in arriving at answers to these kind of impasses.

[01:27:26] Alyson: Yeah, and surrender. I have no idea what Extra Anchovies believes in, but for me, it was surrendering to pure love, God, and earth mother, and my own soul, and finally getting out of my own way and releasing any pride or extra ego and humbly saying, down on my knees, show me the way. And then assuming the responsibility that ensues after such a deep process and listening and really heeding the divine guidance that comes in.

[01:28:10] So I have a hunch, and sidebar, I could be incorrect. So again, only you know, Extra Anchovies, and listen to your own intuition. But I feel like it's potentially more of the shaman sickness path in this scenario where, yeah, if potentially maybe they had set up for themselves some tools or practices or maybe even some practitioners or trusted healers that they can just have waiting in the wings. You know what I'm saying?

[01:28:50] If things get extra squirrely, if they decide to lean in again and that's what they genuine genuinely feel called to do. Because I know that's supportive for me if I know I'm on that avenue A, where it's a calling and I know there's going to be a lot of purging and discomfort, and it's not going to necessarily be pretty or fun.

[01:29:17] And you also never really know is the duration of that discomfort going to be an hour or a year. That's also the great mystery question. But if I even have noted in my journal, like for where I'm at right now in my evolution, these 10 practices are things that I know are going to give me higher vagal tones. They're going to downregulate my nervous system. They're going to allow me to feel grounded. They're going to keep me in my heart, as opposed to getting up into the squirrely mind.

[01:29:53] If I make a list of practices that I know are very effective for me right now, and I remind myself-- and it wasn't always like this. I'm saying for this time in my life. But if I remind myself I have Cookie. I have my husband. I have these five people and colleagues in my life who I know fully see me and are trustworthy, and I know they also hold certain skill sets or areas of mastery that could help me as I embark on this path.

[01:30:22] Just knowing that gives me that extra dose of courage to just keep holding the line. So yeah, there's a lot of variables here, a lot of factors here. But I think it could potentially be the shaman sickness thing. Because it's like your soul, your body intelligence, your innate ancient wisdom.

[01:30:47] There's all these aspects of ourselves that when we are not living the soul calling that we came here to live it, when you go enough years not doing that, all of these different areas of ourselves come into play. They start to ramp up kicking and screaming.

[01:31:06] Luke: Yeah. They start to talk to you. I forgot they did mention that they hit up against an illness.

[01:31:12] Alyson: Yeah.

[01:31:12] Luke: And also mentioned their dharmic path. So it sounds like as they make steps to move into what they believe to be their dharmic path, the body's saying something's amiss here. Something needs to be dealt with.

[01:31:28] Alyson: Yeah. Again, I'm taking examples and stabs in the dark, but it could be the younger parts in them too that are fearful. It could be the protector part. It could be the part that's scared of abandonment. Who knows? But it could be these younger parts that as they're answering their soul's call and making the pivot to go down path A, these younger parts get nervous and they--

[01:32:02] Luke: 100%. There is a book by-- I'll find the title and we'll put it in the show notes. Book by Gay Hendricks. I forget the title of the book. Jarrod will find it. Actually you can look it up right now. Just tell me the names of Gay Hendricks books. And he talks about this concept in the book of the upper limit.

[01:32:27] And I haven't read it for a number of years, but it really landed when I read it. The Big Leap. Thank you. The Big Leap. Highly recommend this to Anchovies and anyone else listening. It's an incredible book, but one of the central concepts of the book is that many of us, if not all of us, have this upper limit wherein there's a certain level of abundance or success-- you're following your dharmic path and so on-- that is subconscious.

[01:32:57] And that when you try to break through that upper limit, your body, you'll get sick. You'll develop disease. You'll start being held back subconsciously and sometimes even physically because there's like a governor of past experience, unresolved traumas, fears, etc.

[01:33:19] So when you get to a certain level, maybe it's like a certain depth of intimacy in a relationship, a certain career achievement, financial achievement, wherein you'll actually get the flu or get something like chronic disease that's trying to keep you from getting past that level. It's a way of the human system trying to keep itself safe. Meanwhile, your soul or your over soul or higher self is like--

[01:33:48] Alyson: Keep going.

[01:33:49] Luke: Let's go big. And the subconscious parts of your body, your nervous system are like, "No, no, no, it's not safe. So let's keep you down here." Funny story, I was reading that book on a trip to Colorado wherein I was giving a talk in Aspen, and I was really nervous about the talk and I got the flu the day before the talk.

[01:34:13] I was like, that's really interesting. Did I just manifest that? I don't think so. I think it was God's way of showing, you know that thing you're learning in this book, the upper limit, you're starting to expand and do public speaking. I was moving out of a different career and into the one that I'm in now. And I had a lot of insecurities around it and doubted myself a lot. Who wants to listen to me? What am I going to say? What if people don't like it? All the things.

[01:34:41] Alyson: Yeah, because it could be the self-sabotage too that's just trying to keep you safe.

[01:34:46] Luke: That's what I'm saying. So it's like my body, I feel, was self-sabotaging me by making me sick. And I just have this ethos maybe from playing in rock and roll bands back in the day. I don't miss a gig. I've never missed a gig. If you hire me to go speak somewhere, I could be like dying and I'll-- so I gave that talk, and I was so sick. I'm sweating, just dying. I cried the whole time because I was like so devastated from being sick and the whole thing.

[01:35:17] Alyson: Also, your system's feeling so vulnerable because those parts you're fighting within internally.

[01:35:21] Luke: Totally. It was so mortifying, just the whole thing. It was a fucking nightmare. But it was one of those thresholds that I moved through. And whatever people thought of the talk, the next day, did it really matter? No, I did it and then I moved the upper limit a little bit higher.

[01:35:38] Alyson: And also on the spiritual path, it doesn't always have to equate to being this way, but I found very deeply from personal experience within myself and a lot of very deep spiritual experience I'm friends with that part of the initiations on the path, it's a humbling. It's a taking you fully down to sacred earth mother, bringing you to, maybe not all the time, your knees, but a deep humble bow of asking for a bit of extra grace or mercy.

[01:36:11] And that's just the cadence of the deeper you get on the spiritual path. Before I had really huge breakthroughs on my spiritual path, just through organically getting known for the work that was moving through me in a very just honest, organic way. I happened to be living in New York City at the time.

[01:36:42] And I've been doing this long enough and I'm old enough that I was one of the people more at the forefront of this wave. That seems to be a lot more commonplace now, but back then, I was one of the few doing this, especially one of the very few doing it so publicly. And I had the job that I had in television. The plug got pulled.

[01:37:14] The show was no longer in existence. I had no job, and a friend of mine was opening up her first-- she had had her own juice brand, but she was opening up her first brick and mortar. And I very humbly took this job being her cashier in this juice shop in Soho. And again, I know that in some respects this is still a first world problem to have, but having reached really high levels of success, living in New York City, working in television and in media then to going to being jobless, and I'm living on my own.

[01:37:57] I don't come from money, so I'm trying to figure how to pay my own bills to being invited to be a cashier. And occasionally people would recognize me when they come in. "Oh, is this your brand? Is this your shop?" I'm like, "No, just the cashier," kind of thing. And also, I had had my spiritual awakening and I was shown who I needed to step into becoming. God was giving me very clear visions of really large tasks and missions. And yet the reality of what I was living seemed very far from these visions that I needed to step toward.

[01:38:38] And yeah, I asked my friend who ran a vegan expo. I was told that I needed to have a table there. And I've never been a vegan, but I called him and he was just like, "Yeah, sure, you can have a table. What are you going to be doing at the expo?" He was just trying to hook me up with as a favor. I was like, "I'm think I'm supposed to do chakra clearings." I just have to humbly take these initiatory steps forward.

[01:39:06] And so, I don't know, I know that's a bit of a tangent, but that example came in in terms of the humbling processes. And also, another example is there is a bit of a purging effect that then can get elicited in your system. This correlates more in the physical sense, but I remember after living my life, previous years in this lifetime as a very hardcore, highest level, national champion athlete. Then the pendulum swung the other way.

[01:39:41] I wouldn't let anyone tell me what to do with my body for years. I wouldn't move my body for years. I wouldn't work out. I just needed to completely reset. And I remember the very first time after years that I was like, okay, at some point, you got to find a happy medium because there are health benefits that you need to figure out, like to move your limb, to get your blood moving.

[01:40:06] I just went from doing the most and being the most extra hardcore athlete to nothing. And when I first started to move my body, I got super sick. And of course there was part of me that was like, "Oh, see. You were on the right track by not doing anything. You just got to keep chilling. This feels better."

[01:40:24] But when I got really real with myself, I knew because I had been so stagnant for so long, for so many years, that my body was releasing and purging toxins and God knows what else, because everything had become a cesspool in my body. And so it also elicited that example too, that in the spiritual sense, you can correlate that same thing when you start to lean into something that's a territory you have never existed in or haven't existed in in a very long time, maybe for many lifetimes.

[01:41:01] It can kick up things that you need to see, you need to feel to clear it. You might have start having really wild dreams where you're just processing fears, subconscious fears, but in your dream time. It doesn't mean that you're off track or on the wrong track. Your body's purging. It's processing. It's showing you things that have been hiding in the recesses of your energy field, of your psyche, and they're finally coming to the light.

[01:41:33] It's not a "bad" thing. And I can also tell you one last note, these different parts of me that I have much more healthily getting harmonized and reintegrated into my system. And it's been such a major game changer for me, I can tell when the parts are kicking up. Because the parts take me into my mind.

[01:42:02] That's when I know they're getting nervous. They're getting antsy. They're getting restless. They're getting fearful. When these certain one to three or four parts that I've been in deep process with over the last couple of years when they're kicking up, I go into mind and I go into analyze. I go into analyze mind. I go up here.

[01:42:28] And so then right away, as soon as I feel that, I go into a process and I close my eyes. And this can take 15 seconds if you wanted to, but I close my eyes and I'm like, "Which part is feeling the fear? Which one of you?" And sure enough, it's the nervous Nelly part who's terrified of making a mistake and is terrified of being imperfect because at a very young age, I equated if you were not perfect all the time, you could lose your family love, and you would probably die.

[01:43:07] So then I tend to her and I ask her, "What do you need to feel safe?" We breathe together. I say, let's find where we feel secure in our bodies. I let that part of me find the security within her. I find where does the security feel in me. Then that part of me and I, we do a breath. We do a breathing sequence together, and I get her calmed down. And it works every single time.

[01:43:35] As soon as I tend to the part or parts that are getting nervous, going into protector mode, that are getting pull into fear, I instantly settle back into my body, back into my heart, back into my soul. I'm more grounded again, and I'm not up in my mind. So that's the sure-fire trick that I have found.

[01:43:57] When it's not a situation where I need to put a boundary and stop doing the work and stop moving forward, it's actually like, oh, you need to lean in because you need to hold the line. Or there's an aspect of you, a part of you that's just needing to be held, tended to, reminded that they're safe again. So yeah. My God, we opened up a whole can of worms in that one question.

[01:44:23] Luke: That's beautiful. For a question that we thought neither of us could--

[01:44:26] Alyson: We're like, "Well, we'll try."

[01:44:28] Luke: That's really good, though. That's really good. Maybe we do one more quick one, but you reminded me of a realization I had at one point. Back in the '80s I was in all kinds of therapy because I was a very troubled kid. And this is back when like the inner child thing was really popular in the therapeutic world. I never understood what the hell they were talking about.

[01:44:53] I could grasp the experiences I had when I was really young, hurt me, and as a result, I was behaving in ways that were self-destructive and whatnot. So I got that, but it was like I could never connect that because I was living in a realm where past, present, and future were very concrete and real, the inner child of the past is gone and doesn't exist anymore to me, I think at that point.

[01:45:25] And over the years, I've come to realize, just through my own sense of being that every iteration of myself is still present in this body. The one-minute-old, the one-year-old, the 10-year-old, the 20-year-old, the 54-year-old from last year, it's like, I think we think of our, as you say, parts of ourselves don't exist anymore because of where they exist in time. And that they're not valid and they're not alive because they are part of our past.

[01:46:03] But I think I told you about this. One day I got this vision of how this works. It's like the Russian, I think they're called babushka dolls, where you take one doll off. There's a smaller one, a smaller one, and it just goes on to infinity until you get to this tiny little doll. And I was like, "Oh, that's like the human biofield, the auric field, our energetic selves.

[01:46:23] Yeah, there's not physical versions of me within, within, within. But the imprints of those different insults and experiences still exist at different layers within the body and probably outside of the body too in our field. And it was like, oh God. So my way of doing what you described is a little different, but the same premise is that it's like that little five-year-old that was hurt version of me still exists within me in many ways that are very real and tangible.

[01:46:58] And so I can have a relationship with those different versions of myself. Again, in my own way, that's not that dissimilar, but I don't use your particular method. But it's been really helpful to me honor all the different stages of myself, because those are the ones that come up and go, "Oh, you have to give a talk. We better get the flu so you don't have to do it." You know what I mean? It's like, if I would've known then that I could go back kind of retroactively and be like, "Hmm, what are you afraid of, little Luke? Let's work through this."

[01:47:34] Alyson: Yeah.

[01:47:35] Luke: It's an important aspect of just self-integration and just self-awareness and self-growth.

[01:47:43] Alyson: And being whole and wholly, W-H-O-L-L-Y. It's because oftentimes those younger parts of ourselves, I feel one of the reasons that they can get so loud, even at age, almost 47 for me and 55 now for you, is because when they first became such a big part of us is when they most needed and wanted to have a voice or to be heard or to be valued, and they weren't.

[01:48:27] The parent couldn't meet that part of us, so it felt muted or suppressed or terrified, whatever the case might be. In one of my instances, the trauma imprint got put in place pre-verbal. And so I think that's one of the reasons why these younger parts can rear up so quickly, so loudly and boldly at times, because they are trying and sometimes clamoring to get the recognition and safe safety and knowing that they are valued and that they are heard and that they are seen.

[01:49:23] They're working to receive that from us because they were not able to be received in that way when they were five weeks old or five years old. And so it's such a beautiful process. There's no choice then but for us to meet each other.

[01:49:45] Luke: Yeah.

[01:49:45] Alyson: Yeah, it's really intriguing.

[01:49:46] Luke: We're the adults in the room now that can steward those younger parts of ourselves. Yeah. Awesome.

[01:49:55] Alyson: Okay. One more short one. Let's see. That's probably going to be a good-- because a lot of these are quite deep. You might be able to do this one in fairly good time. Kelly asks, "Do you find it hard to stay humble and grounded?"

[01:50:18] Luke: That's a funny question. Either way you answer it, you could not be humble by it in an affirmative manner.

[01:50:31] Alyson: Since that one's along the same ones--

[01:50:33] Luke: No, that's a good one. I can do it super quick, and then if you have another super quick one. Here's what I'll say to that. I remind myself quite often that I'm not that important. It's not a low self-esteem, low self-worth thing. It's just I do my best to see myself in everything that I am and who I am as objectively as I can.

[01:51:03] Meaning to be realistic and honest about my place in the world. And that means to acknowledge and accept my talents and my gifts and the things that are unique and amazing about me. And also to acknowledge the things that I really need to keep working on.

[01:51:21] And also that in the great scheme of things, I'm just not that important. It's funny. I got a text from a friend of mine who I shared that with. He was having a meltdown a few years ago, and he was getting really self-conscious and insecure about how he's being perceived online.

[01:51:40] He was doing these things on YouTube, and he was getting trolled. And I just looked at him and went, "Bro, you're not that important." It's a positive affirmation. It's like, no, the reality is there's billions of people on the planet, and you're just one of them. You're one cell in the body of humanity.

[01:51:57] You're meaningless in the most positive sense. And so that's one of the ways that I keep myself down to earth, but more so on the side of being afraid of being judged. It's how I combat my self-consciousness and insecurity. It's like, why am I thinking about myself so much?

[01:52:21] I'm not that important. I don't deserve to be self-obsessing about how I look, how I sound, what people think. It's like, dude, it doesn't matter. You're not that important. It might sound like a weird thing. I'm important to myself. I'm important to you and to my close friends and family.

[01:52:38] Alyson: And to Cookie.

[01:52:38] Luke: Yeah. But in the big scheme of things, it's like my lifetime as this guy called Luke Storey is faster than snapping your fingers or a blink of the eye in the big picture. It's a very short, just microsecond that I'm here as this expression of consciousness. And that in and of itself is not that important. So that's one way that I try to keep myself from taking myself too seriously.

[01:53:07] Alyson: Okay.

[01:53:07] Luke: And also, like I said last week, wearing my blue suit, it's like I also do shit that I don't want to do because it's embarrassing. I do it on purpose to purposefully embarrass myself and keep my ego in check, by just being ridiculous and just being free and authentic and being willing to be judged or trolled and have people not like me or talk shit about me.

[01:53:31] It's like it reminds me that it doesn't matter, and that gives me more freedom to be who I really am and more freedom to express the authentic qualities that are special and unique and beautiful about myself. Instead of diminishing them or over-inflating them, because I have some distorted perception of where I fit in the world.

[01:53:55] Alyson: Mm-hmm. Love that. It reminded me of a topic I want us to get into in our next discussion episode we will do. So I'm going to give you a choice on what you want to wrap up with. Here are your two options. And if yours is not selected, we'll get to it the next time.

[01:54:15] Luke: Okay.

[01:54:16] Alyson: Number one option, are you still working your program? Number two option, what do you do when the urge to use escapism as a means to ending everyday stressors in life?

[01:54:30] Luke: The second one would be a very long answer, so I'm going to use escapism to avoid that question. Do I still work my program? There, I would assume talking about 12-step programs. And it's funny. Not to shamelessly plug my upcoming book, but--

[01:54:52] Alyson: Titled A Horse Named Lonesome by Luke Carlson Storey.

[01:54:56] Luke: Yeah. Thank you. But I do talk a lot about recovery and addiction in the book because it is pertinent to connection and loneliness and all those things. I think loneliness and a feeling of separation in my experience is probably the core issue under addiction. When I use drugs and alcohol, the only reason I did it was to try to connect to something outside of myself, bigger than myself, to feel a sense of safety and security in that connection.

[01:55:28] As far as program, I've talked about it a lot on the podcast and more so even when I'm a guest on people's podcasts and they want to talk about recovery and addiction and topics like that. It's funny. It's like I'm not officially a member of any 12-step group, which is also funny because groups are anonymous.

[01:55:49] And within the traditions of 12-step groups, there is a tradition that is based on anonymity and that you don't share your membership at the level of press, radio, and films, which just comes from the early 1940s, I think. Or no, it would've been early '50s. There's a book called Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. I think it's 1952 maybe, where they realize like, hey, they're not rules, but just like, hey, here's some guidelines that we can suggests. Because everything is suggested.

[01:56:19] That's one of the beautiful things about 12-step movement in general, is that let's not talk about this publicly on TV and things for a number of reasons. The main one, at least as far as I can tell, being say I'm super famous, a public figure that's very notable, a celebrity, let's say. And everyone knows I have a drug problem. And then I go to rehab and I come out and say, I am a member of AA. I go to AA meetings. I'm an Alcoholics Anonymous. And then next month I relapse.

[01:56:51] How many people are not going to find salvation and find recovery because that person made a bad example? Another version of that could be I'm a member of Narcotics Anonymous, and then I am convicted of some heinous crimes. Things like that. It's like you don't want to be publicly a representative of a group because you want people to find and have their own experience if they ever feel the need to go to a group.

[01:57:21] That said, in all transparency, I'm not someone that currently goes to any 12-step meetings. Although I have a couple times in the past few years, but not much. But for the first 20 years of my sobriety-- now I'm at 29 years-- 20 years, full-on, non-stop, all the time. It's my entire life.

[01:57:48] Alyson: And I would venture to guess for some of those years you couldn't have foreseen a time where you were not doing that.

[01:57:55] Luke: Oh, absolutely not. Because when you're in-- depending on the nature of your 12 step group, but if you're in a substance-based 12-step fellowship, one thing that is almost guaranteed, it's very consistent, is if someone, you don't see them around for a while and they relapsed and then they come back around.

[01:58:15] The number one thing they say when you ask them what happened, why did you relapse? I quit going to meetings. I quit going to meetings is number one. I quit talking to my sponsor is number two. I quit reading the literature number three. And I could pretty confidently say that's universal after 20 years--

[01:58:33] Alyson: Would one on the--

[01:58:35] Luke: And thousands of hours spent in meetings.

[01:58:37] Alyson: Would one on the list be they started to date another person in the program?

[01:58:42] Luke: That's one, but that probably is less likely to happen if they're really actively engaged in their group.

[01:58:47] Alyson: Because that's one of the rules?

[01:58:48] Luke: And they're in communication and taking direction from a sponsor, and they're reading and following the principles outlined in the literature. There's an infinite number of reasons that that can happen. Sometimes somebody hurts their back and they get on pain meds.

[01:59:02] But the main thing to the question is like, could I have ever imagined myself as still being happy and successful and sober and not being actively engaged in meetings? No, it was inconceivable. And it wasn't to disengage in terms of active participation wasn't a conscious thing.

[01:59:23] For me what happened really was at first few years I thought that recovery was about not using substances, and then your life would just become smooth and easy and you'd be successful in whatever you were doing. That wasn't the case. I was extremely troubled, even though I was sober, because the anesthesia that I'd used to mask my trauma basically was now gone, and I'm like a raw fucking wound.

[01:59:53] Then over some years I started to really get a lot of good help and guidance and understood that really the purpose of the 12 steps. They're really a spiritual teaching and that the basis of those teaching is to learn how to actively live by spiritual principles. To use those as the guiding forces of your life.

[02:00:12] And that the addiction is not a behavior. It starts as a thought. It starts as a feeling. It's like the way that I framed addiction is, it's a mental illness. It's an obsession of the mind. You're so insane in your mind. You mentioned getting caught in your mind. That's untreated alcoholism, untreated drug addiction.

[02:00:32] So after a few years, I started to really get some solid recovery. And then my life really started to change and I started to become free. I was free in terms of sobriety from day one. Thank God. By the grace of God and a lot of pain, I never relapsed. Many people do. Most of them don't make it back.

[02:00:52] But what happened for me is after, I don't know, 15 years of taking my primary program as far as I possibly could-- I honestly don't know anyone that was that into it as I was, like, the history, the literature. I was obsessed because it was helping me so much.

[02:01:10] But then at a certain point I started realizing what's commonly referred to as outside issues. So I was having issues in my sexual behavior, in my romantic relationships, with money, with debt, just friendship, dynamics, codependency. All these other issues started coming to the surface, for which I elected to go to a number of different 12-step fellowships that were specifically focused on dealing with those issues.

[02:01:38] Because those issues weren't the primary purpose of the program I was in. A lot of people had those problems, but that's not why you're there, so it's not really appropriate to address them. So once I realized like, wow, I have no problem staying sober. I'm perfectly happy. I'm never going to drink or use again forever. It's not happening. I'm committed to this. Then those other issues started to come to the surface. So there was a few years of really getting a lot of help in other programs.

[02:02:04] And then at a certain point, I don't know, hit a ceiling might sound like, oh, I graduated, which is definitely not the case. But I felt like all the help that I could be given by any one of those programs was hitting this wall that I could not get over. And that's when I started working with plant medicines and psychedelics.

[02:02:31] And then it became very clear to me that trauma and things that I'd experienced in my life were not going to be solved by applying the 12 steps harder. There was like real somatic nervous system, subconscious, deep, deep stuff that needed to be healed. I thought this was going to be a short answer. I apologize. I realize I'm passionate about this particular topic.

[02:02:58] That said, the question is, do you still work a program, AKA, are you in a program? You can't take the program out of me. It's who I am. It's what I am. Everything that you love and appreciate and respect about me, you're probably aware of this to some degree, is all because of the 12 steps.

[02:03:23] Whatever level of integrity I have, authenticity, caring, compassion, loving, admitting when I'm wrong, making amends, meditating, praying, keeping an inventory of myself, watching my shit, self-awareness, all of that, being of service to other people-- this is what we're doing here, hopefully every week-- everything I do in my life that's meaningful to me is rooted in the teachings in the 12 steps.

[02:03:54] And the teachings aren't exclusive to the 12 steps. Spiritual principles are everywhere. They're universal. They've been around for infinity, and we'll be here to eternity. They're just laws. They're natural laws. They're just the way things work in the spiritual realm. Just happens to be for a guy that's wired like me, the way they're codified in those teachings known as the 12 Steps is a perfect fit, and it's presented in a way that is applicable and with simplicity, which is why I think I don't really get into the Atlantian and aliens and channeling-- and God bless people on that path.

[02:04:36] You're never going to hear me like, "Oh, I'm a lumerian." I'm just not into all that stuff. I'm like, willingness, humility, honesty, kindness, compassion, being of service, making amends. The basic shit is I think all most people need. So for me as a recovering addict, an alcoholic, that's what served me.

[02:04:58] And there's a certain point where even, I couldn't get any further because I needed to do some deeper healing. And for me, most of that happened through plant medicines. But I still consider myself 100% sober according to my parameters of that, and plan to be that way for the rest of my life.

[02:05:18] And that's when I mentioned CBD that has some THC. I'm not fucking around with that. There's a governor within me that's like, "There are certain lines you don't cross." And so with all substances, whether they're helpful in healing, plant medicines, etc., it's like I have a circle of boundaries and some things are way outside of the circle. Certain behaviors, substances, whatever. It's a hard pass forever.

[02:05:44] And then there's some that are closer and I'm cautious with and have discernment and prudence around. And then there's some that I feel very safe and don't have a problem with.

[02:05:53] Alyson: Yeah, even some desserts. I'm like, "Oh, I don't know." It's like a bourbon cake. And you're like, "No, it's okay." But yeah, I just--

[02:06:04] Luke: Oh dude, when I first got sober, you know a lot of herbal tinctures are made with alcohol. I would boil them. I was like so cautious. And then over the years, I just learned like where I felt safe and where I didn't feel safe.

[02:06:19] Alyson: The first time we met I had oil of gold, and I remember because you were like, "What did you bring?" I had a bell and oil. I have a few things I'd brought that day and I was like, "Oh, this is oil of gold, but it's based in alcohol." Because I think you had mentioned that you were sober or something. And I was after the episode. Yeah. And you had mentioned--

[02:06:43] Luke: When I checked into rehab in 1997, I was 26, I was just done. I couldn't--

[02:06:52] Alyson: By the grace of God.

[02:06:53] Luke: I couldn't take that pain anymore. I just couldn't suffer anymore.

[02:07:07] Alyson: Hmm.

[02:07:09] Luke: And so that surrender, it was as deep as I could possibly go. Now, as I said later in life, I had to surrender more aspects of myself to find that freedom. But with substances, it was like I'm done. And the grace of God met me there. And it's like a compact that I have with God where I just know, dude, you have this protection. I've been given this protection.

[02:07:41] But because I have free will, if I step out of line, that protection could evaporate. And if that protection that I feel I have is gone, it's hell. The way I used to live is hell. It was terrible. So whether or not I go to meetings or not at this stage in my life, maybe I will again, but I'm not going back there, period.

[02:08:18] I don't care what happens. It's not going to happen. And I know how to stay out of that hell. And I'm not going to change. And it's because of those principles, and it's because of the love and service of dozens of people that held my hand and were there for me.

[02:08:35] And that's one of the reasons I stuck around, even though for years, I didn't need it myself. But I felt beholden to give back. I couldn't just like, "Oh, you guys came behind enemy lines and dragged me out, and now I'm safe. Bye." I really spent a lot of time helping guys that were new in recovery and stuff, and I really miss that. But my life just changed in a different direction, and now I do my service in a different way than sitting in a church basement, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, with a sore butt from a plastic chair, which I did for thousands and thousands of hours

[02:09:13] Alyson: Mm-hmm.

[02:09:14] Luke: But I think that the service is probably the part that I miss the most in that lifestyle, is just having just such a visceral, such a direct experience of helping someone find themselves and find their way and get sober and flourish. It's really beautiful, beautiful gifts to be able to participate in that experience.

[02:09:36] And I really miss that, but I'm in a different place in life and doing different things. So I find other ways to serve and help people that maybe aren't as immediately gratifying. But this podcast is one of the ways that I do that.

[02:09:51] Alyson: Okay. Well, glory be. Hallelujah. Thank you, God. Good job.

[02:09:57] Luke: Every time I'm like, "It'll be a quick one." It never is. Especially if it's something meaningful. I would like to say though, just out of my own accountability, people sometimes ask questions when they're struggling with addiction and things like that, and I got no answers except for what worked for me.

[02:10:18] And what worked for me was 100% complete abstinence from all mind-altering chemicals, except in the early days, coffee and cigarettes, which is very common in recovery. But going to treatment, getting a headstart for 28 days, that was the only way I could get clean. I couldn't wake up one day and just be like, "Yeah, today I'm going to live my life and not do heroin." It's not going to happen.

[02:10:42] So if you're a really bad addict, my recommendation is, man, you got to get help because it's too much for one person. And recovery is a beautiful life-expanding experience. And that's the only way I know how to do it. So that's the only recommendation I really have for people around that.

[02:11:00] And once you're on the other side of your first 90 days, six months, there's a lot of work to be done to stay sober. Not just to stay physically sober, but to become emotionally sober, financially sober, mentally sober, sexually sober. You can take recovery to a lot of different levels.

[02:11:18] And when it gets painful enough at each level, if you're like me, you're going to reach toward a more comprehensive experience of recovery. But for addiction, I can't recommend 12 steps enough. Saved my life straight up, period.

[02:11:40] Alyson: So grateful for that.

[02:11:44] Luke: It's a act of divinity. Last thing I wanted to say was, it's just, I believe, an act of divinity and act of God that a drunk-ass stockbroker from New York that had no experience in spirituality or spiritual teaching got downloaded this literature and these 12 concepts, these 12 principles, and it's went on to save the lives of millions and millions of people since 1935.

[02:12:51] It's insane. Homeboy was downloaded. It was like a channeling, a direct message from God. Here's how you get sober, and here's how you help other people do it. So it's a really beautiful gift to humanity and to my life. Thanks for joining us, you guys. What are the show notes again today, honey?

[02:13:10] Alyson: lukestorey.com/642.

[02:13:13] Luke: Okay, so anything that was linkable or resource listable today, we'll put at those show notes. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you next week. And happy belated Christmas to those that celebrate Christmas.