Matt Maruca:  [00:00:11] There’s something to be said about just not buying into that mindset that you have to suffer in order to be successful. Because as the master, if you check every moment that you're not happy, it's just a lost moment. I think you're never going to get that moment back. This is like why couldn't I just cultivate true blissful happiness in every moment, regardless of the situation and see the beauty and sitting across from this beautiful soul here, doing a podcast, blessed with everything, and be in that energy all the time, and then letting-- they say like, you have to let the other stuff that comes up fall to the wayside. I Matt Maruca, and this is the Life Stylist podcast.

Luke Storey:   [00:00:56] Welcome back to the Life Stylist. This is Episode 419. It's called, Let There Be Light: How to Eliminate Consciousness and Biology with Matt Maruca. Show notes with links, video, and transcripts for this episode can be found at lukestorey.com/lightdiet. Let's go ahead and intro our guest who frankly, if you're a longtime listener, needs no further introduction. But for those of you new to Matt, he first appeared on the show a few years back when I met him in New York City. He was only 19 at the time and quickly became a listener, favorite, and in fact, one of my top downloads for quite a few years after.

Well, Matt has come a long way. He's now the founder and CEO of Ra Optics, which teaches people about the important roles that light plays in health and develops the most advanced light-therapy-based product for transforming health. Learning the biology of light led Matt to the discovery that we are beings of light, which helped him learn to let go of being sick as an aspect of his identity, and further propelled him on a spiritual journey to realize the unlimited nature of our human experience. 

Now, to be honest, this was a really tough episode to tee up here in the intro as Matt and I covered such a wide spectrum of topics. So I'll drop a couple of hints here. But for now, I just recommend diving in as we traverse a lot of interesting territory around personal growth, spirituality, and entrepreneurship. 

That said, a few of the topics covered include Matt's experience founding a startup as a young person, how Matt came across the final piece of the Light Diet, holding yourself back due to fear of causing jealousy in others, the lie that our worth is based on what we do, letting everything inside us that isn't love die, the importance of healing ourselves to become living examples for others, craving the unknown instead of shying away from it, and the massive difference having an anchor can make in the life of a nomad. 

Because if you know Matt and his work, he just travels the globe and runs his company and does his thing. It's pretty fascinating. And we talk a lot about how he's able to do that and still maintain his life. If you want to check out Matt's blue blocking eyewear line, go to lukestorey.com/raoptics, that's R-A-O-P-T-I-C-S and use the code over there for 10% off. All right, let's hit it headfirst with Matt Maruca. Hope you dig it. Hot damn, dude, here we are. 

Matt Maruca:  [00:03:22] Here we are.

Luke Storey:   [00:03:23]  I was so excited to hear that you were going to be in Austin for Paleo F(X), and I told Bailey over here. Shout out to Bailey Richardson. What? And thank you for introducing me to Bailey, by the way--

Matt Maruca:  [00:03:33] My honor.

Luke Storey:   [00:03:34] -- my incredible show producer and assistant extraordinaire. But I was like, man, we got to record with Matt because you're so nomadic. I will never be able to catch you. You're in like Turkey one day and then Costa Rica the next. I'm like, I've never seen anyone, especially your age travel as much as you do. So I'm like, we got to sit down and catch up. So what's the latest and greatest? Where did you come from before you got here to Austin?

Matt Maruca:  [00:03:58] So I was just in San Diego for a little while visiting some friends. My mother has been staying out there, so hanging out in Encinitas really beautiful town. Before that, I was in Miami. So I was there only a week. Before that, I was in Miami for about 10 days for the Bitcoin Conference, Bitcoin 2022 which is something we could also get into a little bit on this chat. 

Really interesting subject bitcoin is if you're not already super familiar, but to me, it's the future of money and the future of freedom. And I can only give a cursory explanation, but I feel that the way I might be able to explain it, similarly to light, would resonate with many people who can't get it when a hardcore Bitcoiner starts explaining it. So that'd be fun. 

And then before Miami, I was in Costa Rica, good old Costa Rica for two months just surfing away. And before that, I was in Germany, and before that, Switzerland, and before that, Norway, and before that, Italy through the winter. So I went, if you can imagine, from the opportunity to be in sunny places to really cold places for the winter, starting with Russia in September and then through Europe. It was really cool. I had been craving winter for years being in the ever summer time. And it was really refreshing actually to have a really true winter in Norway in January. The days were about five hours long. It was really interesting. Yeah, it's been quite the ride.

Luke Storey:   [00:05:26] Wow. So you started this company shortly after we met years ago in New York City on that fateful day. You started your company Ra Optics. Those watching the video, he's wearing them right now, and were instrumental in helping me launch my brand Gilded. So thank you for the recommendation on manufacturing and making sure that they were scientifically awesome. 

But you started that company, and unlike most people I know that had a startup, generally, they're building a team and getting office space and scaling in a brick and mortar situation, and the whole time I've known you and watch your company grow, and you've done such an incredible job with the product development and the marketing and all the things, but yet every time I see you on Instagram, you're surfing in Costa Rica. I'm like how is this kid doing that? As someone who's run a couple companies, I never managed to get away from my computer for more than a couple hours a day. So what's it like being a nomadic entrepreneur? And what are the systems that you use? How do you do it?

Matt Maruca:  [00:06:35] Dude, you did the best, first of all, I just have to say so. I think it's a great time to recount a little bit of a story of how the business came into existence so as to inspire people and have a context for how things came to be, and that will answer most of the questions. For people who want the full detail and more in that time, they can go back to listen to the original extreme biohacking millennial edition episode. But I would just recap and basically say when I was growing up, I had a great life, great childhood, but I had some health challenges. So I didn't inquire though. It was just I accepted it.

And then by the time I got to high school and I had these really debilitating headaches, gut issues, allergies every day, it was just bringing me down. But that wasn't enough for me to look for a solution. I was fully accepting that it was genetic and I couldn't do anything. But then I started getting really bad breakouts of acne. And I was like, no, because you're 14 years old, you want to be with girls and look good, and it's like you don't want to look covered in pimples and stuff.

So I started reading. Paleo diet came up, how to improve my skin health and overall health with food. And I learned about the whole 30 cleanse somehow, and I was like, I can't afford this whole 30 program. But then I found oh, it's the same thing as paleo diet. Basically, they just charge for it. So then I started reading everything I could. 

And I ran across Mark systems blog, and he wrote about this term epigenetics. And I was like, wait a minute, our genes aren't just our blueprint for life. We can actually turn certain genes on and off based on our environment/lifestyle choices. That's really profound. I didn't know that. I think my mom had allergies, so I have allergies and I can't do anything about it. That was just what I accepted. 

And when I went out to all the doctors through those previous years, it was like, you have gut issues. Take Tom's from the gastro doctor. You have headaches. The pediatrician says take Advil. And you have horrible allergies. The allergist says take all these Claritin, Zyrtec, all this stuff. And it just never ever did anything, because it was all just symptom-level stuff. So anyhow, the whole situation advanced where I got obsessed with paleo, went all in and I got a benefit. So I was like, these guys must be right. Mark systems contention that it's 80% about food and 20% about everything else, I fully believed that that was the truth.

So I went all in on food, all in on diet. I went from the paleo diet to the autoimmune paleo diet because I thought, well, if paleo works like 50 to 60% for me, autoimmune paleo should knock out the rest, because then I cut out those trigger foods that are, according to this theory, which I'd like to explicate how I feel the theory is flawed, but you cut out these trigger foods is the idea and then your body was supposedly going to heal itself. 

But they never actually ever spoke about what in the body leads it to heal itself. So the idea is you, again, you take out all these trigger foods with the paleo diet and then magically you get better, but they never talked about the magic. They never talked about what's causing the body to heal ever, ever. 

And so then autoimmune is like, well, if you're not fully healed from just paleo, then you should go autoimmune paleo. It should take everything else out, all the nightshade and the nuts and seeds and anything else that could possibly inflame the diet. And the furthest extreme of that thinking is the carnivore diet. So I ended up doing autoimmune paleo. And I wanted to do gut and psychology syndrome, the GAPS diet, which they use for autistic children. 

And anyway, I was eating only well-cooked meats and well-cooked vegetables, and that was it. And I actually was feeling worse and worse and worse, because I was buying more and more into an energy of victimhood and stress, which I think is all too common now with people doing diets. 

But while we're on the subject, and we will get in, of course, to the story of the business and how I started in the entrepreneurship, I think it's worth now that we've hit this point to touch on just how significant it is that none of these diets take the time to explain what's doing the healing. So for example, the carnivore diet has grown to extreme proportions. It's become super compelling as one of the number one diets today. It's probably taken the place of what the paleo diet was five years ago. Everyone's like, let's go carnivore, full keto.

And so the idea with carnivore is that basically the body is assaulted by plant toxins. So when you eat plant toxins, they basically activate the immune system. And then they damage the gut, they activate the immune system, the plants are trying to defend themselves. And then the whole body gets into this inflammatory cascade, where if you have an underlying autoimmune condition, those plants actually either activate your immune system and trigger your autoimmune disease, and they go so far as to actually say that the plants themselves cause the autoimmune disease by constantly creating a leaky gut and inflammation.

Now on the surface, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But the thing that really struck me was like, well, how are there all these carnivore people who say that they're healed by the carnivore diet and yet if they eat a blueberry or a sweet potato, or a piece of broccoli, their total immune system flares out of proportion and their body goes into a crazy haywire state and they're sick? 

In my evaluation, I was like, if you can't eat something humans have eaten for thousands of years with relatively robust health, the whole idea is like, oh, humans have been going downhill since the agricultural revolution. And we should all go back in time and go back. To me, I don't think that's actually true anymore. A lot of the things I believed about paleo, I think humans have been evolving mentally, physically arguably not, but mentally and spiritually for sure. And a lot of the calls to go back to primal living is actually calls for de evolution. That's probably a controversial claim. 

But not that there's nothing valuable about looking at ancestral wisdom, of course, I believe there is. That's what I'm all about, getting back to nature and circadian rhythms. But specifically on carnivore, it was clear to me like, if your body is still reacting to blueberries and sweet potatoes and any plant toxin, you're not healed. You're just not. 

You think you're healed, but you've done exactly what you said you were going against Western medicine to do. You've said Western medicine is the problem because it's only addressing the symptoms, and you're not healing the fundamental cause. Well, you've removed all the foods that activate your symptoms. You've done the exact same thing that Western medical drugs do, just with food instead of drugs. You haven't healed. 

And so for me, that's a very, very profound thing because it's like everyone's being, in my opinion, bamboozled by the idea of the carnivore diet that you're actually healing. It's like no, and no one ever speaks about-- So the idea is you remove these plant toxins for long enough, even sometimes permanently, but in the autoimmune diet, it's that you remove them for a certain period of time and then somehow, but no one ever, ever answered or even asked how the body heals itself. It's like well, shouldn't we talk about that? What if you could just access the energy responsible for the healing of the body? Maybe you wouldn't need to cut all the foods out.

Now, you might imagine that I'm going somewhere with this towards Joe Dispenza and the teachings of spirit and energy because the more I've learned about light, so circling it all back, the food worked but only partially. The autoimmune restricted diets, they worked but only partially. And then I learned about Dr. Jack Cruz, a good buddy of ours and really intelligent guy. And something just resonated deeply because a friend of mine describe it as like you have a truth bell going off in your heart when you find something out. There's a truth bell going off.

I don't believe every single thing Jack teaches to be true, but vast majority really on point. So I read all these books that we spoke about on the earlier podcast about energy and this and that and all this stuff. And Dr. Robert O. Becker in the Body Electric, he exposes that the body is a electromagnetic system. And then you I came across Ram Dass and be here now and all these spiritual ideas and I was like, this just sounds super interesting. I would never have bought into any of this, like, let's say woo woo from Ram Dass if it weren't for this idea of bio electromagnetism and photobiology from Dr. Cruz, but I was open to it. So I was like, this makes some sense. There could be something here.

Years went by. I ran the business, and we'll get into that a little bit, but I was still so stressed. Even though like, okay, I might have been on Instagram in Costa Rica or they joke like, your Instagram is showing your good side of your life, life may have looked really good, in the podcast the things we were talking about and sharing were and still are very valuable truths about light and circadian rhythms, but there was something that I hadn't gotten. I hadn't figured it out. And it was, I was so stressed and so struggling. And I was like, there's no way that my Light Diet, let's say, this protocol is fully accurate, because if it were, I would feel whole. I'd feel the way I want to feel and I didn't feel it yet.

So that's when I finally had recalling these spiritual inclinations in these energy books. I finally was like, all right, I need to find someone who I can lean all in on, who I really trust they're not a charlatan and if I put my energy into their teachings, I'm going to get a result because I don't want to waste a year of my life with a charlatan. And that's when I finally realized, you know what? Joe Dispenza, their name has come up five times. I've seen him on podcast, I listen to his podcast with Aubrey, I listen to his podcast with you, and I was like this guy he's got it. My truth bell was like, Joe Dispenza.

So I started going to his work. And his work's unbelievable. It was the first time in my life that I realized that I was responsible for all of my suffering 100%. I was playing the story of the victim. I was playing the story of like, I can't do this, or this is stressful, or whatever. I was choosing to wake up every day and be stressed. And I did his online intensive and progressive course during COVID. It was great. It empowered me beyond measure. I'm in control to a certain degree. And actually not in control at all, but I get to at least choose how I'm going to flow on this boat ride through life. Am I going to be super stressed or happy? 

So as soon as one of his week-long events came out through email, I signed up for it right away. And you guys signed up for the same one. So I was super stoked when I was driving up one morning and I saw you and Alyson walking down the street. I was like, yo, let's go. Luke and Alyson in Marco Island, it was fire. 

So anyway, that wasn't such a good event that as I mentioned you, I sign up for the next one, so two months later, in the end of February. So that was early January '21 and February '21. That one was so good. I signed up for one three months later in the middle of June in '21. That one was so great. I signed up for one in September in 2021 in Turkey. And I was like because I want to go to Europe and I ended up going and then I signed up for another one in February of '22. And I'm going to another one in June. So it'll be six in a year and a half coming up pretty soon. I'm very stoked. 

But the as you know, because you were there, he describes very clearly how, in a way that some people would say is woowoo, but to the open-minded people like us, you can actually say maybe there's something to this. You dissolve your concept of yourself into the blackness, into the oneness, into the field or God consciousness, everything all around. And the idea is like if you could connect to the perfection and unison of everything that's all around us, you can actually heal in an instant by eliminating those disconnects, or, let's say, the delusions that we hold within our limited perception and reuniting with the all in all, the infinite. 

And as you're again also aware, because you went to the event, there are people at his events throughout the last year and the ones I went to earlier this year, people who, and the past ones, who literally have miracle healings. There was a woman at that event at Marco Island who was paralyzed, couldn't walk and by the end, she was swimming laps in the pool. 

There is a due at the later event who had chronic pain in his legs. He wants to have his limbs chopped off. But they said they couldn't even guarantee the pain would go away because of the phantom pain phenomenon. And so he ended up just going all in on Dr. Joe. And by the end of the week, he went from his wheelchair to two crutches walking on the beach to one crutch. And by the end of the week, he was sprinting down the beach and Dr. Joe tells the story a volunteer was running to chase the guy down. There are people who restored full vision in a healing meditation where they fully connected to this healing energy field. 

And so all that's to say like that's it. That's what I was looking for. I had my own moments where maybe I didn't have light beaming through my body, but I had some pretty intense emotions and feelings connected to that light, some kind of source energy. And the only thing that could happen was tears streaming down my face and heart lit up. I mean, everyone I think felt this at one point or another at least I would hope. So to me I was like, that's what I was looking for all those years, not the diet, not the health, not this. I just wanted to feel whole. I wanted to feel loved. And I was thinking, well, Dr. Joe is a genius and extremely intelligent the way he's putting this information out.

But he isn't the first person to talk about this. For sure, the ancient Indian, Eastern, and Chinese and so on masters, and the Sufis and many others have been talking about the same thing. So why not go straight to the source now that I'm sold? So I started reading all these books from Paramahansa Yogananda, the Indian yogi because I happen to be in Encinitas a lot. And that's where he spent the last 13 years of his life. And so I thought maybe that wasn't a coincidence that I ended up there before knowing anything about him.

And then I met a guy surfing in Bali several years ago, who was actually part of the lineage. His master is one of Yogananda's descendants. His master is based in India. He's one of the leading Kriya Yoga masters of the day. And he was actually, I recalled later he was the first guy to ever tell me about Dispenza, because he was trying to point me in this direction. So all these pieces came together. And I feel is like, okay, can I scientifically articulate mechanism, for mechanism, for mechanism, for mechanism exactly how it all works, exactly how when someone goes into a healing moment, exactly how it happens?

Not exactly, Dr. Joe could do a better job. So I recommend people check out his work. But even then, if a skeptical scientist wanted to go in to Dr. Joe and try to tear it all apart, sure, they could. They could use their lens and see that his stuff doesn't fit in their lens. But that's what we call the profane, the people who won't believe no matter what. And for me, there's enough pieces that lined up here, especially with the scientific foundation of the Body Electric to understand that the basis for existence of this energy field around our body, which is more or less connected with all of the energy of the universe, as well as we are because the cool thing and Dispenza really hammers in is we are not the matter that makes up our body.

And that was another thing that Dr. Becker made clear in his book, The Body Electric, like when you have a limb chopped off of a salamander, it regenerates perfectly the way it was before. So if that salamander is so connected to its body, and that limb comes off and the salamander is just its body, how do all the cells know to reorganize themselves exactly in the right way? The salamander is not the body. The salamander is the field and the body is just what Joe Dispenza calls the hologram that we see in the three dimensional reality in this slice of what we're able to perceive of the total reality. 

And in the same way, when a human egg cell is fertilized with the sperm and that genetic information is shared, there's a big blast of light energy and activation of a process that starts occurring, the unfolding of life. It's actually really an unfolding when a baby is growing. It's like unfolding of information and energy. No standard biology can answer this. No any standard biologist who tries to debunk Dispenza, they have to debunk themselves first. 

Seriously, there's no standard biology theory that can explain how the toes become the toes, the head becomes the head, the eye tissue becomes the eyes, the liver becomes liver, because guess what, every single liver cell, every single retinal cell, every single brain cell, they all have the same 23 chromosomes with the exact same genes. So how do they know how to be there, and there, and there, and there, and this and that, and the other thing, exactly where they need to be at exactly the right time, exactly always, always exactly? 

There's no amount of biological orchestration that could make that possible. There's nothing in standard biological theory, but Becker's book is the opening foundation for that. It's energy medicine. It's the camp called the vitalists. The vitalists were people who believe that there was some energy spark responsible for life, and they're competing, and this was like camps of scientists in the 1700s, 1500s way back. And then there are other ones with a mechanist. And they were like, life is not energy based. It's all about chemicals and blah, blah, blah. 

And Becker basically exposes-- the vitalist lost out with the advent of penicillin and the advent of antibiotics and drug-based medicine, which was largely pushed as a side note by John D. Rockefeller paying a guy named Abraham Flexner, who apparently wasn't even a scientist to write a report called the Flexner Report to Congress, basically shadow banning or canceling-- not shadow banning, but openly canceling quote, unquote, in modern lingo, "all vitalist based" medicine sources. Acupuncture, Reiki, herbs, homeopathy, all of it was considered non-medical in the eyes of the law because of the Flexner Report. 

And the only evidence-based medicine is a drug that you can create as a byproduct of petroleum, which is what all modern pharmaceuticals are, which is John D. Rockefeller's business hence why he did it and that you could have a problem and input a drug and then get a result. And so that's what happened in medicine. 

But the reason I share all of this is to go back to what I see to be tremendous shortcomings of the carnivore diet because it falls prey to the idea that you are not responsible for your healing, but that it's going to come from something outside of you. And you have to basically be the person who insulates themselves with bubble wrap, and just goes around the world protecting yourself constantly, you can't eat a blueberry, you can't get a cashew, you can't eat anything, because your body and your spirit is too weak to take any of that stuff. 

Now, this could catch a lot of heat, but I'm happy to share it because it's true. And the idea is that people who will truly heal will heal themselves by overcoming whether it's a trauma or an emotional belief, or could be excess artificial light toxicity, it could be lack of sunlight, it also could be a lot of other factors. It's not just emotions, although some like Dispenza would say that's the main factor.

And so all that's to say that, I feel very strongly that people should be very careful when they buy into the idea of carnivore diets and these types of things. Because again it's saying that we don't understand how healing actually works and that the best you can do is cut out every possible thing that could possibly activate your body without ever looking inward and actually working on healing yourself from the inside out. 

And again, oftentimes we can see lots of very famous people who have gone carnivore who are very sick, and it didn't actually help them. I not sure I should use a name here, but there's a very, very prominent psychologist who has been known to have lots of bouts of health challenges and stuff. And he went fully carnivore, and it didn't really heal, it didn't really work. It doesn't work for a lot of people. 

And if you go on Reddit, you can see a huge amount of carnivore threads, problems with carnivore. I don't mean to just single out carnivore. It really goes for any diet, whether it's the autoimmune paleo diet or the paleo diet itself or Paleo F(X), or the GAPS diet. And I can speak from experience because I did basically all of them. It's all an attempt to cover up something that you haven't dealt with yourself, something that needs to be internally dealt with. 

And the diets for me, were always an excuse from actually being present in the world. I was like, I need to eat perfectly. That's why people are so warlike about their diets. And that's why, it's crazy I'm saying this, but people identify so much because it's like, they build this concept of like, you have to be carnivore and someone else who's able to thrive as a vegan threatens their sense of their identity because they're building their identity on a very precarious foundation because it's based on nothing really.

Luke Storey:   [00:027:46] Have you ever wondered why some people get really sick while others only have mild cases? Well, researchers say the answer can be found in your gut health. A study published this year suggests that people with leaky gut and other gut symptoms may be at higher risk of severe illness. You know what I'm talking about? In fact, more than 70% of your immunity is created in your gut. Why does this matter you might ask? Well, even if you're doing everything right, you will still be exposed to viruses and bacteria. It's simply unavoidable. It's just how the world works.

Personally, I've had a lot of leaky gut issues over the years and have made some huge improvements lately. I recently found an insanely cool product called Biome Breakthrough. Biome Breakthrough is the only formula that can repair compromised gut lining. So it helps to rebuild with the right probiotics and prebiotics and activate the four critical pathways to super immunity. It eliminates bad bacteria, feeds the good bacteria, and gives your immunity the strength it needs to fight off viruses. It's really cool stuff. It also comes in two flavors-- chocolate carnivore and vegetarian vanilla.

How I use it is I just throw this stuff and whatever morning drink I make, hot or cold, and it tastes delicious or not noticeable in some cases, and also mixes easily with pretty much everything. So power up your immunity today and try Biome Breakthrough risk free by visiting biomebreakthrough.com/luke. And, of course, I got a code for you. It's luke10. That gets you 10% off any order. Again, that code is luke10, and the website is biomebreakthrough.com/luke. And listen, if it doesn't work for you, these guys are giving your money back within 365 days of purchase. Totally risk free, awesome, works, check it out.

There's a lot to unpack in there. I think fundamentally, you said at one point of looking for something outside of yourself to repair and heal. And this is I think also you use carnivore diet as an example or any of these fad diets, but it's also true of all of the biohacking stuff too. There's a fine line between experimentation and optimization and self-discovery and research. But there's also this slippery slope of temptation to get so caught up. And I'm speaking from direct personal experience, so caught up in always thinking you need something from the outside. And if you really look at the core of what most humans are after, it's just a sense of belonging, fulfillment, purpose, serenity, love, acceptance, connection.

And so it's like the end goal is that. And we get caught up in all of these touch points along the way to that. But going back to the work in consciousness in Joe Dispenza and these other spiritual teachers you mentioned, it's like, all of that shortcuts and supersedes all of these external more matter, physical base regimens and practices and things like that. And you can see this, I think when you meet someone who doesn't pay much attention to how they eat, doesn't take supplements, doesn't do biohacking, but they have a robust spiritual practice and a sense of faith, and the inner knowing that they possess the power needed to achieve that end goal, and they're fine. It's like, how do you explain that? 

I see my wife is like that. And she's healthy, but she doesn't do all the stuff that I do. And she's doing great because she has her spiritual connection and her practices and things like that. So for me, it's not an either or. But ultimately, I think if any of us look at why we're doing anything, you exercise, you eat what you think is right at any given time, everything that we're motivated by, the end goal is why we're doing it. So what if we could just jump to the end goal? 

And I found this to be true lately like, I eat whatever. If you're like, what diet do you do? And I go, I don't know, just whatever I feel like eating. I'm might to try to avoid seed oils, and obviously, pesticides and glyphosate and some of the things that I know would be more difficult to overcome metaphysically because they're just so taxing. 

But I find that the more I surrender into that universal power of healing and well-being, the more sympathetic my body is to me being a little looser about how I live. And there's less of that orthorexic contraction, this fear based contraction of eating the blueberry or the broccoli, or whatever it is. I mean, I even eat gluten sometimes and I'm fine. Sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I react to it. But sometimes I eat it and then the next day, I'm waiting for inflammation or whatever other symptoms and I go, I'm fine. It's just like I was in the right state of mind that day and I was just enjoying my life. I wasn't being so retentive and uptight, and my body responded with the ability to metabolize those things. And on a different day might be problematic.  So how old are you now?

Matt Maruca:  [00:033:14] 22.

Luke Storey:   [00:033:14] Yeah, you're so stoked, bro. If I could go back into time machine, just put your brain in my 22-year-old head, I'd have had a much easier time for 20 years after that. But yeah, I mean, this is really the key as within so without, and it's like that, the slow process. And maybe you can actually unpack this, since you've spent so much time with Joe Dispenza the past couple years. It's like the speed with which one can affect change, working from matter to matter versus energy to matter, may be go into that a little bit because I think that's where all of this culminates and why this process is perhaps going to help people save a lot of time and money.

Matt Maruca:  [00:033:57] Yeah, of course. So the matter to matter versus energies matter. So first, to further explicate the point, I would say that if you had taken my brain and put it in your body at 22 years old, based on what I've just shared, the brain wouldn't have done anything because the spirit is what guides the function of everything. So you would need my spirit basically, or my energy field. Because if you had taken a brain, raw materials, put it into your body, but still governed by a different energy field, it would have resumed the functions just like an organ transplant does of that other field. So you'd actually need my energy, basically my consciousness, so to speak, which isn't mine per se. I'm working on doing my best to merge--

Luke Storey:   [00:034:42] It’s the single point of access of your consciousness interfacing with the field, the totality of consciousness. So if I could have taken your single point of consciousness access and neuro linked it into my 22-year-old dumb ass self, I would have had a much easier.

Matt Maruca:  [00:035:02] And then one other thing I would just point out as you mentioned, it's not either. It isn't either or. I'm not saying people should meditate and take care of their spirit, and then eat junk. That doesn't make sense. That's not intelligent. That just isn't a sensible practice. However, as the acute listener would recall from earlier, the question that I really had all this time, I didn't even know I had the question, but it showed itself as I started to learn the stuff was that, how does the autoimmune paleo protocol actually lead to healing? What is that force that's leading to healing?

And as you said, you can connect to that greater consciousness that can heal. And the more that you do, maybe things become easier for you. I have come to believe that that is the only force that heals. That is the only thing that's responsible for healing. Even when we go in the sun, we're using the sun as a channel to connect to that greater energy or red light therapy. These are more energetic forms. But for example, if you are really sick in your spirit, you could take in all the sun. And this was my exact experience. I took in so much sun and red light therapy and blocked all the blue light just as Dr. Cruz advised, and I was still struggling. 

I was like, this can't be it. And I would be excited to share with people like, just when I was on paleo, like, this is the thing. You got to do this. Just like someone who's on carnivore, like, this is the thing. And then whereas on the light, just the light protocols, the quantum health stuff I was like, this is the thing. Everyone has to do this, but proselytizing, almost out of a place of not being secure in myself. 

And that's to say that, yes, we can do the light therapy and take the supplements and eat the healthy diet and eat all this stuff, but all of my experience really showed me that the thing that really is responsible for the healing is that connection, and that any level of the orthorexia that goes into, as you mentioned, of any of this stuff is actually directly limiting our access. And so as you said, you could just jump into the states of bliss and joy. And that that is the challenge like, can you-- and Michael A. Singer in the Untethered Soul does a really great job of sharing this idea, like-- 

Luke Storey:   [00:037:16] Incredible book.

Matt Maruca:  [00:037:17] Yeah, incredible. I really listen to it frequently on audio anytime I walk because it just brings me to a state that I can't really describe in any other words, other than you have to read it and experience it and surrender into it. But he explains like, you don't have to be unhappy. We can just choose to be ridiculously happy in any situation and keep that. And the only reason we lose that is because there's something we're willing to trade our happiness for. So if I decided just right now to be extremely happy, maybe who knows, what would I be letting go of my happiness for? Maybe it's because I feel like if I just get too happy, someone's going to judge me, or it's going to make the podcast weird, or I'm going to go into a state of, for example--

Luke Storey:   [00:037:57]  Please don't be too happy on this. We'd like to keep it somber.

Matt Maruca:  [00:038:02] But there's this sort of like, maybe lack of worthiness. Maybe there's just a discomfort that you get to a certain place, and you're just like, no, like, I can't just be happy beyond that point. There's some blockages that we have.

Luke Storey:   [00:038:14] Have read The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks?

Matt Maruca:  [00:038:16] No.  

Luke Storey:   [00:038:17] Bro, you got to read that.

Matt Maruca:  [00:038:17] Big Leap, right?

Luke Storey:   [00:038:18] Yeah. He eliminates this idea called the upper limit where each of us has this self--

Matt Maruca:  [00:038:27] Imposed?

Luke Storey:   [00:038:28] Yeah, self-imposed, that's the word I'm looking for. I'm really coffee deficiency-- this self-imposed upper limit of joy, fulfillment, happiness. And what's even more interesting about the way he frames it, there's a lot more to it, but the part that I think I really identified with and I've taken as a tool is that when we hit a certain point, it's not only that there's a part of us that doesn't believe that we can achieve greater states of wellbeing and happiness and just be free, which is what I hear you describing, but that will subconsciously sabotage ourselves and even get physically ill.

And there's this phenomenon of people getting a promotion, or you are going to do a keynote speech or it's your wedding day, a huge leap forward in terms of your quality of life and your body, your subconscious will make your body sick in an effort to keep you at that level at which it was comfortable because you're about to surpass your upper limit and your capacity for joy and success in every element of your life. That book and that particular teaching in a book is huge. 

Because I see it within myself still. It's like, I just bought this house and spent a hellish 15 months renovating it. And it's like, I see, there's a point at which it's like, ah, we can't get it done. It would be too good for me. It's like a sense of not deserving it almost, and then perpetuating delays and problems, not that it was all my fault, but there were points at which I was like, oh, I'm making this harder because there's a part of me that's not ready to just go big and have a family and be married and adult. 

And so it's like, there's these blocks put in place that make it more difficult. And there's a constriction in that and more friction and more challenges and problems. And not all of it, but part of that could be attributed to that upper limit. There's a part of me that's just like, ah, I can't imagine myself existing on the 21st floor. So I'm just going to hang out at the 15th floor and frustrate myself. You know what I mean? 

Matt Maruca:  [00:040:25] Yeah. 

Luke Storey:   [00:040:26]  And then all you can really do is break through to the 16th and go, okay, can I go further, can I go further and give oneself permission? You just said, I don't want to be too happy on this podcast. I experienced that all the time. When I'm really in my power and in my truth, I noticed that there's a part of me that wants to downplay it and play small because I don't want to shine and make someone uncomfortable or bring undue attention to myself or cause people to be envious or jealous or something like that because I'm killing it. I experienced that a lot during the COVID era. 

Because I had many points as concerned as I was about some of the social implications of this whole disaster, I was living my best life. I like staying home. You know what I mean? And I was still making a living and doing great. I did better in the past couple of years financially than I've ever done, for example. And I feel bad for the people that have lost their livelihoods and stuff, but it's like to hold back from celebrating that and acknowledging that with humility, hopefully with gratitude and an earnest honoring that you are only a participant in your success. But that need that some of us have to stay small is so perfectly illustrated by that concept of the upper limit. It's like, what if we just were conscious of that and just ignored that? We just went for broke.

Matt Maruca:  [00:041:50] There’s a really cool poem-- I forget the name and the author. So it's not going to be as much help, but people will recognize it. It's like the woman starts this poem as saying, our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. It's that we are powerful beyond measure. And you could probably find this fairly. It's really, really good. If you get it, you can just share the name. And we might even want to throw it in the show notes. But it is a really powerful. It showed me like, wait, that's the fear. It's that somehow I would like to shine so much, and then make people around me uncomfortable. But that's the whole message. 

And so now the message with Ra, our logo, what we're putting on the inside of our glasses case now is, you are the light of the world because even Jesus said in the Bible verse, and we'll get to Jesus soon enough, but he said that, you are the light of the world. A house that's built on a hill cannot be hidden for long and something like that. And I'm loosely paraphrasing, but basically, so and you too should let your light shine so that men can see your works, men and women can see your works, and that your Father in heaven can see your works too. And it's like that to me is the calling. It's like, why don't we just shine? And that's why we get on this podcast. I'm like, you know what? I'm not going to be shy and not tell the truth to people because I happen to have gone through a tremendous amount of pain and suffering. I mean, really, for someone who was 18, 17 years, I suffered a lot.

Thankfully, I wasn't like-- and also I want to be careful because there's an addiction to reliving that and going back by talking about it. It's like no, no, not necessary, not even useful. But I'm fortunate because I had such great opportunities, so much growing up in a fairly wealthy area and going to a public high school where every single student got a MacBook Air given to them by the school district to use, super boogie, all these opportunities, a business making money, coming in every month, I can go travel and do whatever I want. And yet I was still stuck, feeling tremendously stuck, stressed, in pain, suffering, miserable. 

And I mentioned that I learned from Dispenza that was my fault, but I didn't know that at the time or my choice, let's say, to stay there. And yeah, I was so like, on the fifth floor that I didn't want to go up higher. I didn't even realize I didn't really take the time after a certain point to dream that I could go higher. So when I started listening to Dispenza's work, I realized-- I've heard people say happiness is like a muscle. If you don't use it atrophies. It's not like you can store happiness for the future. So I bought into this very American and Western idea that I could save my happiness for the future. So when I was a kid, I was in high school, I was having fun hanging out. 

But after a certain point when I went abroad, my junior year of high school when I was 16, to live in Bosnia and Eastern Europe, we talked about that on the first podcast, I believe, and around then but even earlier when I started to take care of my health, I went from more of a happy go lucky young guy who's running track in field, having fun with my buddies, doing stupid stuff, having a good time to fully embracing this idea that I need to work super hard to secure safety and stability for myself in order to be okay. And that the key word there is that in order to be okay. I couldn't be okay, period. I had to do all this stuff to be okay.

And that actually, that one sentence and the changing of the words there to have to do all these things to be good or okay, versus just being able to be okay, that was how I spent from age about 13, 14 until last year, 21, so seven years, so all of my memorable life, I spent in a state of thinking besides the fleeting memories from below the age of 13, but majority of my conscious memorable life, age 14 to 21, I was in this idea, this delusion that I couldn't be okay as me and just who I am where I am at any moment that I had to be constantly doing something or striving for something.

And it came out in many different forms. One particular line I remember was, when I would tell my mom that I was, I always felt like I was doing the wrong thing. No matter how hard I was working, no matter how good the business was going, no matter how much this this was when I was like 18, 19 early in the business and I just remember telling her like, I always felt like I wasn't doing the right thing. No matter what I did, I didn't feel like it was the right thing. And I remember her saying to me, just like in a motherly way that only a mother can, like, honey, that sounds really tough to not feel like you're doing the right thing ever. That's got to be a pretty challenging way to live your life. That wouldn't be fun. 

And yet, that was just like, for whatever reason, I embodied that delusion like it was the truth. And you can see by having a multi-million dollar business at 22 because I embodied that delusion. I'm not saying that having a multi-million dollar company at my age is bad. But the amount of forcing, pushing, and stressing that I've put myself through to do that was not necessarily something that was good. 

I feel that people are prone to go into this delusion just because it's what we're taught. And that many people don't. There's a great book called The Catcher in The Rye that I read in literature class in high school that talks about how-- The Catcher in The Rye was the person, the child who saved people from falling into the delusion of adulthood. And it's just funny that this just came up because I haven't thought of this book in literally five years or six years since high school. 

And I was like it'd be nice to not fall into the trappings of adulthood, and yet I did. And then many people, I think they like stay in the Peter Pan like the childhood like they don't want to become an adult. But they think mistakenly that being an adult has to be miserable and stressful, like by taking on that responsibility, you have to become less happy. And that almost at least I can only speak for myself. But there's a belief that I actually had to be stressed or unhappy, maybe that was the example I had from my parents or people I saw around me that in order to be acceptable as a person, I had to be experiencing and accepting some level of stress.

And so I just took that to the fullest extent possible. I accepted as much stress as I could, so to speak, and in energetic level. I chose to always be stressed thinking that by always being stressed, I was worthy, like I was worthy of something good because I was choosing to always be stressed. And that's why I love learning. And I wasn't raised Christian at all but I love the Bible, because Jesus teaches like, that's just not how it is. You're worthy because you are and you can just be love. And that's worthiness.

And so by being stressed and forcing, and forcing, and forcing, yes, it led me to have a business. But it wasn't fulfilling. It didn't lead me anywhere that I wanted to go. And so seven years later I finally realized like, why do people think that, back to this idea of delaying my happiness for the future and happiness being muscle, why does anybody think that you can save happiness for later? So I thought like, okay, I'm going  to put my head down, spent all my high school years focusing on healing my health, and then okay, now I need to focus on starting a business so I can be financially secure. And then I can focus on building the business so that I can be financially stable. And all of these things in my mind were like, I need to do these in order to be okay. And so I just kept pushing, pushing, pushing with that energy.

And I remember one time a friend of mine, Mike Russo, who you know, he would tell me, the best thing that can happen to you at one point-- and he was my biggest fan, biggest supporter, he came in to help me grow my business. And at one point, he actually said to me, like, the best thing that could happen for you would be if your business actually like went away, failed. And it was such a hard thing to swallow. But I understand now and the level of love and care that he has in saying that was beyond massive, because I was doing what people are doing, whether it's with the carnivore diet, or whether it's with other things, I was doing everything possible to create that insulation, that bubble wrap around myself, so that I never had to go anywhere that was uncomfortable. 

I was fully insulating myself from ever having to feel like those feelings of whatever it was, some trauma or something that maybe happened when I was a young kid, not necessarily worth going there, but something was there. And finally, it was just like, maybe I can just let all this go. And  it'd be like, if you spent really so many years building up a persona, becoming someone, and then finally just being like, I have to let it all go. And that's what I've been starting to go through. And if it meant like that the business goes away, and that was like, the hardest thing because I was so attached, like I need the financial income to maintain my freedom and blah, blah, blah, because if I needed it, which isn't even true. 

And there's something to be said about just not buying into that mindset that you have to suffer in order to be successful because as the master who check every moment that you're not happy, it's just a lost moment. That's it. You're never going to get that moment back. So why couldn't I just cultivate true blissful happiness in every moment, regardless of the situation and see the beauty and sitting across from this beautiful soul here, doing a podcast, blessed with everything, and be in that energy all the time, and then letting-- they say, you have to let the other stuff that comes up fall to the wayside.

Luke Storey:   [00:051:51]  It's so prevalent in humanities experience in general, but specifically, I think in the realm of business and entrepreneurship and any type of high performance, I mean, it could be a set of an athlete or anyone that's trying to achieve a state of greatness and success is this thing that we catch, this mental meme, this erroneous mental meme that our worth and our value as a person is based on what we do rather than who we are. 

And I've seen this in relationship with other people in romantic relationships where I'm just trying to enjoy that person for who they are, my wife, Alyson, for example, being one of them. And that's someone who was really productive and built this career and is an author and doing all these amazing things, that's not why I love that person and love their company and love spending time with them. It's the core of who they are. I just want to be in the essence of their spirit and their soul. And the way that that animates their personality. What they do doesn't mean anything to me. I totally don't care what someone does. It's who you are. 

And it's, I think, easier to apply that to people outside of oneself. Because I relate to everything you're saying, as an entrepreneur myself for a long time, it's how do we get to the point where we're able to really love and accept ourselves for who we are and acknowledge that. It's difficult to be self-referential in that way, to look in the mirror and go, who you are is perfect and awesome. We want to see the metric of who we are, which is the manifestation, the material results of who we are. I did this, I built that, I achieved that, I got the accolades, I got the awards, I got the social media following, the website, clicks, whatever it is that you're measuring who you are by is the result. 

But what if we could just be with who we are is what I'm hearing you say and actually celebrate more in that? And the byproduct of that is likely the same success that we were trying to achieve by measuring our success by what we achieved. It's like when I'm with you, I'm like, oh, Matt's so cool. He has this company. I don't care about your company. I don't think about your company. I just like your energy. You text us, "Hey, you guys want $27 smoothies from Sunlife? I got you. Show up with the bomb smoothie, super happy, great hug, authenticity, big heart, super smart." Your wisdom, just who you are as a energetic being is why I love and respect you. It doesn't matter what you do. You know what I mean? And that's so easy for me to see that in you because you're not me.

But how do I wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and go, you're fucking awesome kid, regardless of how much I accomplished or didn't accomplish, because I have that same thing. It's very easy. And I've been meditating for 25 years, pretty much daily, the past 20 I would say. Rarely a day goes by that I don't get at least one meditation. And so I'm someone who just practice in the art of being present, yet at times, it's difficult to take that meditation into a state of being an activity.

It's like, can I just sit at home and just do nothing? No, sometimes because I feel like I should be accomplishing something. I should be producing something because I still have that belief on occasion. And it's, I would say, becoming less so over time, because of conversations like this and applying some of the things I'm learning. But what if one could just be in their own presence and not base their worth their value on what's been produced or what's been accomplished?

And my theory on this based on experience is sometimes you actually accomplish more because there's not that sense of pushing and resistance. You're not swimming upstream. You're in that energetic flow. And then you find yourself doing things without so much attachment to the outcome. It's just doing something, any kind of activity or any sort of production because you just enjoy being with yourself in the act of producing and creating. It's that present moment awareness combined with action rather than action to hope that we achieve some sense of peace and present moment awareness when all the work's done. It's like that Western model of work your ass off until you're 65, then retire. 

And I think what's interesting about the lifestyle you're creating and the inner work that you're doing is, what if, rather than going on a permanent vacation at 65, what if there were momentary vacations within along the way of just enjoying one's own vitality and one’s own energy and just being with that? But in order to do that, I think, in my experience, there's a lot of clearing and a lot of shadow work that's been necessary. 

Because oftentimes-- and I want to get your take on this, I think oftentimes, what drives us is we're actually running from something that we don't want to face. There are hurts in our heart that haven't been healed. There are ways in which we've trained ourselves to think. There are hidden traumas, personality flaws, defects, negative patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving that we're running away from. And it's like the Hellhound on My Trail. It's a famous blues song, or probably many of them with the same theme. It's like we're constantly like, oh, the boogeyman is about to get me. What if we were able to just through different practices, turn around and face the boogeyman and really get into the depth of what has caused our suffering, and really be with that as uncomfortable and terrifying and painful as it is, so that one can gain the ability to just sit and be with ourselves?

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Matt Maruca:  [01:01:27]  When I sit and meditate in the morning, I really go all in and I really put in a proper effort to overcome myself and to be willing to break through that-- what was the term of the ceiling we've created?

Luke Storey:   [01:01:43] The upper limit.

Matt Maruca:  [01:01:44] The upper limit, so to actually break through some kind of upper limit. And I'll spend days, sometimes weeks working like eight-hour days, six-hour days or longer sometimes, whatever. I try not to work too much. There's this thing that you're cool if you work 20-hour days. I don't think that's cool. I think that's a misery. And I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. I think it's cool to be able to work four hours or six hours in a day or less, and be having a successful company. That's a measure of success for me, not someone who says--

Luke Storey:   [01:02:13] And to not feel guilty about it. 

Matt Maruca:  [01:02:14] Yeah, and to feel like, hey, I'm proud that I've been able to be efficient. I think what I've seen and I've emulated for long enough to realize that it's not the way is the people who say I worked 16-hour days and feeling like I had to work 16-hour days or even 10-hours or whatever, to be worthy or even eight-hour days. 

And that if I could actually run my business and work three hours a day and do something really valuable and enjoy the rest of my life and be able to concentrate some of the great energy for my enjoyment into moving the business forward the next day, I think that that's cooler and more respectable than someone who's like choosing-- it's like our culture rewards the victims. It's like we put in many, many levels, which we will not get into probably now, but the victims are rewarded in every area so much so that the guy is like, yeah, I worked 80 hours a week, like that that's the one is rewarded. You don't have to work that long to be successful. And we'll go all the way back to your original question eventually and touch on that. 

Luke Storey:   [01:03:10] We get into the answer for the first question at the 90 minute mark.

Matt Maruca:  [01:03:14] Yes. So I've had so many times where I would have one great meditation, and in that one great meditation, whether it was 30 minutes, an hour, two hours, where I fully overcame something that I had been ignoring for months, maybe years, maybe I didn't even know it was there, and it felt like more productive work was done in that period than the next or the previous two months combined. And as a matter of fact, there can be specific problems in my business that I've spent so much energy to try to address to the question we didn't answer the matter to matter way of solving problems.

So you asked the question, and we can touch on this one of how touching solution from energy versus matter can be effective. I'll give a very real moment example. So for example, I'm ordering things from China, like glasses cases for our glasses. And they're an important part of the product, but they're not essential. But they are really important for the presentation. I want to have our logo on the cases. I don't want to have to use some generic cases that I could get faster because they're already in the States. I want the ones with our branding. And so I have to order ahead and do a lot of stuff and planning.

But anyway, I'd spend a ton of energy actually recently just deciding like, do I want to have these all sent by sea freight? No, because that's going to take too long, and we might run out of what we have now before that comes in. And there's all these things like that, COVID, who knows, everything could take way longer, like when they say a month it can take three months, four months, could get stuck in the port and customs and it could be forever. It could be six months, who knows? Or I could have these things shipped by air freight, but it just cost like three times more. It's way more expensive and I didn't plan ahead enough to have enough time to get it all by sea.

So I spent a lot of energy just last few days in this particular instance, thinking about this one very, very minor question in the grand scheme of things, but I'd get so absorbed into it in my world of the things I'm doing in my business on a daily basis. And that is an example to your previous point of a upper limit I've created that I should be dealing with these kinds of problems because I believe that a, it's my responsibility to deal with those. And that b, I'm not worthy of being at a higher plane, so to speak, and either having someone else deal with that, or just say, you know what, because it is what it is, and I could have been planning more ahead, but I didn't, I'm just going to have them all come by airfreight. I'm going to pay an extra three grand or whatever it's going to be. And then they're going to come. But the thing is, if I try to solve it matter to matter, in my experience, thinking, thinking, boom, boom, boom, I'm only going to continue to analyze the situation from a level of mind of scarcity, lack, constantly with an undertone of guilting myself for not having been more proactive previously.

So it's like, there's that all that emotions there. And then I spent two or three days with that as a large subconscious weight that I just didn't solve the past few days. And then in a moment, where, for example, now we're doing a podcast I'm like, wait, this is my purpose. This is what I'm supposed to be doing, teaching and sharing the message. And I know that, but I choose to not allow myself that on a daily basis, for whatever reason, it's the upper limit, letting myself be the guy and do my thing and know that I can hire people to support me now that I've gotten to that place that I wasn't at when I've previously tried to make that work.

And basically, in one period of meditation, or a greater level of thinking, I can arrive, and this is just one instance, but I could arrive at a higher consciousness and just say, wait, wait, why was I thinking about it like that? Okay, yeah, sure, two or three grand, that's not nothing, that's a lot of money. But in a business standpoint, and I've spent more money than that before, wasted more money than that before on stupid stuff or accidents or mistakes or whatever things that you just can't plan for, it's like, it's a worthwhile thing to solve the problem, get it off my plate, and move on to the next thing and not waste days or weeks extending out that phase of unworthiness. Eventually, I'm going to get from A to Z and say, I need to make a decision. 

So it's just like, I'm learning that, in a way, I'm answering the question here. It's like, just by connecting to a higher consciousness, a greater, as we said, the singular connection to the greater consciousness, instead of trying to solve the problem with the logical awareness of what we have around us, or what Dispenza would call matter to matter approach, just by connecting to the consciousness of God, or what we would call a higher consciousness of the universe, these much clearer perspectives come in, but you have to give them time. 

We have to sit disassociate from-- I couldn't sit and think about the problem for an hour, because then I've just spent an hour thinking about the problem more. I'd have to actually be willing to get over that, what seems to me often, it'd be an impossible thing to get over, of just like, I'm not going to keep thinking about this, even if it literally hurts, like I'll feel it like a weight in my body, I'm not going to think about it. 

Some people might just happen that they just forget about it, and they go out for a drive or a walk or a run, and then it just solves itself. But again, if you go out for that drive or the walk or the run, and you say that you're going to spend the whole time with it on your mind, you're still not going to solve this. You'd actually have to be whether it's in a meditation or something else you do, willing to overcome what I would and Dispenza would say, like the addiction to the emotion, which in my case, it would be like scarcity, lack, like we can't just spend all that extra money to just solve a problem quickly and move on to much bigger and better things. 

But that's really the only emotion that needs to be overcome because if I wasn't in scarcity and lack, I'd say, you know what? We got to do this. I'm going to plan better in the next time so I can get everything in time with sea shipping, even though it takes three times longer or more, and just move on, and then go and sell, and not just sell, but help 1,000 more people in the time. I just wasted two days when I could have been recording podcasts and writing content, writing blogs, and go help 1000 more people sell a bunch of glasses, make up for it tenfold and then we move on and life's better. So it's like, in that one instance, I think it beautifully demonstrates an example of the upper limit way of thinking, like I'm stuck. There's no solution. It seems so complicated, versus like, just burst through.

And then as far as physical healing, that maybe goes a little bit deeper. But when people-- as again as Dispenza describes, and I'll just make a caveat here, I don't claim to perfectly represent the teachings of Dr. Dispenza. I've experienced and learned a lot from him, and I'm just doing my best to paraphrase, but if people want that, they should go check him out for sure, drjoedispenza.com. I don't claim to accurately perfectly represent everything because he asked that people don't try to teach his work. So I'm just sharing from my own personal experience as journalists might. 

And so people at these events and in their own meditations, not just at the events, they will "connect" somehow quote unquote. They describe it as if their whole body was flooded with light. And so where does that light come from? Well, it's actually all around us. It's that cosmic energy that some people call it God, some people call it cana, or chi, or lifeforce energy. And it's actually all around this is the idea, even according to the ancient traditions. 

And so if someone were able to disassociate from their consciousness, so we're not talking about the biology and the cells, someone's consciousness, which is, when I close my eyes like, I have me and my consciousness, that's it. It's not my name. It's not my background. It's not my connections. It's not my history. It is all that we are is that point of consciousness as Michael Singer describes in the Untethered Soul where that consciousness that the witness as he says. He says, if you start to meditate on the witness, you'll uncover one of the great mysteries of existence, which, as I so far as I can tell is that that witness is omnipresent, omnipotent. It is our connection to the all in all. 

And if someone were to be willing to fully let go of all of what Sadhguru aptly describes, limited identification in the podcast he did with Aubrey Marcus, it's like, we fall prey to limited identification thing, I am Matt or I am Luke, or I have this problem, or I have to be worrying about this thing. It's like all limited. I'm defining myself as this guy. If we don't fall prey, if we can step out of that limited identification, then we can see more of the truth that we have access to that energy field that's all around us, and that we can actually tune into it.

 But we would have to be literally as Dispenza says, and other great masters have said, we'd have to be willing to let every single part of ourselves that isn't love actually die in order to let the love flow through. So to put this another way for someone to understand is like people-- I've heard people say, also really in a cool way, that God actually wants to love us. That is what the Christian scriptures say and that's what a lot of other people in any spiritual realm will say, God, the force of the universe wants to love into us fully. It's just us that stopped him or it from fully breathing through us and lighting us up with that light. 

So the idea is that-- maybe another way of putting it is that we actually already are whole, and it's actually the energy. You don't have to go out to get it. It's actually trying to permeate your cells and your being and your chakra system and your whole energy system. And that it is actually our very beliefs and limited identifications about who we are, what we have going on or stored energy in the form of traumas, which represent as constant, psycho emotional baggage that we're carrying around, because we haven't solved and worked out those traumas. And it is those very, let's call them kinks, I like to think of it like the spine is a straight line of a soul, of our energy field, and in a way it actually is, and that we actually develop these kinks, so the energy can flow through. 

So we actually have to be willing to let go of the kinks, which we're attaching to, as we've described, because of some-- they're like are, they make us feel comfortable and safe. And we have to be willing to let go of those. And then once we do as hard as it is, and this is like a work of the heart, it's not something you can do with your brain, it's a totally different way of living that I'm starting to just experience a little myself and learn about, but when we can do that work, the work of the heart, the work of the true light warrior, someone might call them, we could have moments where so much energy is released, or a kink is actually undone in that soul, in that spinal energy column is just a way of thinking about, I don't know if it's exactly accurate, and then that energy can flow in and permeate that particular area with this higher consciousness, or what we have referred to thus far as that 21st floor of the building when you're hanging out on the fifth floor, and you're like, literally in a new world. 

And so in many cases, these people have this experience and they felt so amazing. And then their disease went away. And so the way Dispenza has explained it is that it's not that their disease was healed. It's that the foundational issue in their energy field, this kink and their soul, so to speak, was released and the disease healed because the disease was just the symptom. And so it goes all the way back full circle to the beginning in the same way that the carnivore diet, just like Western medical drugs, addresses symptoms only, only symptoms. 

Yes, in a way by removing certain foods and things, it gives the opportunity of the body, of this energy flow, to maybe heal without being berated by these, let's call them plant toxins. But if as soon as the plant toxins go back in the body reacts like crazy, that fundamental, true illness hasn't been healed. So it's like, the energy field heals, the disease, which is the symptom of the energy, this imbalance heals, and then the person heals. 

And that can only be accomplished back to this question of from matter to matter versus energy to matter, you couldn't logically think yourself, you couldn't therapist yourself to that healing. You couldn't psychologically analyze and move yourself to that healing. You'd have to go deep in ways that I can't even articulate and let go of the person as Dispenza says, who is the one who is sick, and you'd have to be willing, like Jesus says, to die, to be reborn. I believe that's something from the Gospels. 

So energy to matter seems to be a much more expeditious and effective strategy because if you want something, it means that you can have whatever you want. Because you already have it, you just have to realize you have. Because you don't want the car, you just want to feel like you have the car, the feeling of worthiness. You don't want all this stuff. And so that's why I said, I could literally do two months of work and feel like I did more work in that one hour meditation. And it's actually true, because all I was trying to do for those two months of working and grinding, for example, two months, whatever the time period is, was to get to a place where I just felt good. And then in one hour meditation, I just feel good. It's like, I didn't have to do any of that stuff. 

But then imagine how much better I could actually serve my purpose as a business owner coming from a place of true abundance as opposed to a place of scarcity and lack. And people can feel it. You can feel who's a charlatan and who's not. You can feel it. There's a really great story-- and I'll wrap this spiel up and then maybe we can touch a little bit on how to run a business while you're on the road part before we wrap up here. But there's a really great story I was told by a good friend of mine who's a practicing yogi, I mentioned, I met surfing in the water in Bali, and a very prominent ayurvedic doctor out of Russia, he works with a lot of the top politicians and leaders in Russia and people and hoping that he's getting closer to the big boss, to alleviate some of the challenges over there. But basically, he told this beautiful story about I believe, was Gandhi, when Gandhi was seeing patients or seeing people. 

And this woman brought her son who had serious issues with sugar consumption. She told him the story like yes, my son has a serious issue with sugar consumption, something like he's looking that he's going to have diabetes, it's looking like that, and he is just not good. And it's a real big problem. And maybe can you help him? And so he says,  okay, so come back in one week, and please bring your son, and that's it. And so the woman leaves, and then she comes back in a week to see Gandhi. And she brings her son, and then he says, is it okay if I speak with your son alone? And so he speaks with her son. And then the son comes out and his sugar issues completely solved. 

And so the question is, then what did Gandhi do? What did he say to the son? And what he did was he took it upon himself for that week to fast entirely from all sugar, to be the living example, so that when he would speak the words of why it's important to show that restraint to the kid, he's not speaking as a charlatan, or someone who just says that they know what they know. He actually did it for a week. That's why he told the woman to come back a week later. And then the boy’s problems were solved. 

So somehow, there was a healing that occurred in him, because he had maybe the greater consciousness, the greater discipline to accumulate that power within himself. And he was able verbally and energetically to transmit that energy into that child's field as we're describing all we are is actually a field. We're not the body. We are the field as I touched on earlier from Becker's work. 

So his field was able to impart onto that boys field the truth, and then the boy was healed. And so to me, that's a really beautiful example of how I could be telling all the best words and saying all the best things, but if I was in the state I was in two years ago, super stressed, and coming on, like, I know this, I know that about light, I know this, I know that, but not willing to like meaningfully go in, feel something, overcome it, and be maybe slightly wiser from it, I wouldn't feel good first of all telling people about wellness and happiness and health. And b, it wouldn't even work at a fundamental level because the akin and tune person can smell a charlatan.

Luke Storey:   [01:19:41]  Before we get into what I'd like to wrap up with just some of the nuts and bolts of the original question because it's very useful to people today that have been put out of work and are having to reinvent themselves professionally and such. But one thing he touched on that I think is really important and it's around the upper limit thing and that is the addiction to suffering in the form of being addicted to stress, addicted to resentment, addicted to anxiety, addicted to depression, and it's so strange to frame it that way because who would choose that? So why would we become addicted to something that's not preferential?  

And I think that it's about familiarity. When we're in a state or even manifesting circumstances in our life that bring about something that we don't actually enjoy, or want, or like, yet we're stuck in these patterns of bringing that back into our experience, because it's familiar. And the unfamiliar is that upper limit. It's like, what you're describing in form of like, what if I work three or four hours a day and the same amount of stuff gets done, and I'm actually happy and enjoying my time with people and things like that? But that's unfamiliar. It's like the uncharted territory. So I think human beings are wired toward familiarity because we perceive that to be where the safety is.

And perhaps it's in there is where that, just to use a generic term of addiction, it's like this attachment to just the way things are not because they're right, but because that's how we know them to be. I think this is really, really important. It's something that's been really valuable to me, especially in the past year, because I've been under-- I don't know, you always think like the last year was the hardest year, but it's the hardest one in a while just in terms of the amount of inputs and what's been required of me to manage and get done.

But I also know that there have been times where I've added things to my plate unconsciously just to make things more stressful because there's a certain familiarity and like having zero time, like one more text, you're like, ah, when we're beep on the phone, it just, like, it takes me over the edge. And it's like, yeah, but I did it to myself. Why? I could have made things more simplified. I could have taken on less, but it's like that drive to achieve and the unconscious addiction to feeling stress. It's the crazy human phenomenon because you think that we'd have an aversion to discomfort, and we do in some ways, but we also have this compelling drive toward it because it's familiar.

Matt Maruca:  [01:22:26] Yeah, I feel that's a very, very accurate evaluation. And to put my piece on that, it's that, so I remember a story a few years ago when I was just starting the business. And I remember speaking to a friend of mine, who I met through the Jack Cruz community, really sweet guy named Nick. And he just gave such great advice. And I just remember telling him like, this is so hard, it is so hard being 19 running a business. There's no path. All my friends and everyone went to college. They got the path. They go to class, and they go have fun and drink and party and do sports. And there's a path there. There's no path. There's no one I know who's my age who's running a business and trying to be nomadic or traveling. Again, but I chose it.

And in fact, to your point, I didn't have to constantly be traveling for years. I didn't have to be even choosing to run a business and not even at the same time, much less but I did. And at the time, I would have just said, well, I didn't know what else to do. I didn't have a choice so to speak. But of course, I had a choice. I could have just set up shop in any one place and just been stable, but it's like, I was choosing to stay in suffering, but also in the unknown. I craved the unknown. I wanted the unknown, but I also was, instead of owning up to it fully and being like, I want the unknown and I love it, which is now and it always has been the truth. It was like I want the unknown and I love it, but I'm too shy to say that out loud or even be honest with myself about it. And I'm so stressed because I'm trying to-- I don't have a home base. It was just the stories I would just tell, and tell, and tell, and tell and I made my identity around that person. And it was just my choice to reaffirm that.

Speaking of the unknown, at the events, these Dispenza events, one of the interesting things was at one point in the beginning we were using these vision board mind movie things. But then later on in the year they weren't using them anymore. I was like oh, like that's interesting. And what Dr. Joe explained one day from the stage is that he realized like it's cool to say I want this and I want that and I am this and I am that in your mind movie. It's cool to have those goals. 

And the overwhelming consensus was that people eventually because they realize that they can create anything, he tells the stories of the people have the mind movie and they're on their on their fourth mind movie because everything already came true from the first two or three. Can you imagine your dream house, your dream car, your dream partner, like all of that. And all of it ultimately goes back to people just literally wanted nothing more than to feel the unknown, like love. 

And looking at the Untethered Soul and the Surrender Experiment from Michael A. Singer, his other book where he explains his life story, which was constant surrender, no matter what happened, and always saying, yes, if he felt his ego trying to resist something, just saying, yes, I'd be happy to do that, someone asked something of him. And he ended up running this multi-billion dollar company, going through horrible legal challenges, the context during which he actually wrote the Untethered Soul. So if you read the Surrender Experiment, understand the time in which he wrote the Untethered Soul, he was literally, in a really precarious legal situation where he may have ended up in jail for the rest of his life, not because he did anything wrong, but because he was basically wrongly accused of something in a company.

And it's a really great story. I highly recommend it to anyone, but he is the living example. The book resonates so much because he was the example. He wasn't a charlatan, didn't just making stuff up or like Jesus talks about the Pharisees, they're hypocrites. That was one of the most common themes of the Gospels was the Pharisees. They're the hypocrites. They preach on the streets of these truths, but they're really living lies.

I asked this friend of mine, who's in this lineage of these kriya Yoga masters that I mentioned earlier, the Russian ayurvedic doctor, that's why I was over visiting Russia in September, and I asked him like, so I don't quite get it. On the one hand, I have some of these spiritual people teaching like manifest your dreams, create everything, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, which is super cool and empowering people that way, why not? If it's possible, why not? And then you have Michael Singer, on the other hand, saying, like, well surrender. Just surrender to whatever life gives you. Don't necessarily even try to make this big dream and goal. And I would actually go away from certain experiences in the spiritual world, and feeling like I needed to push to create my reality, or to do something. And that was only my interpretation. That wasn't what was being said, per se.

But then the Surrender Experiment resonated with me so deeply. I was like, wait, you don't have to force or fight. You can just surrender. And I was like, my version of creating my reality and living my best life is actually being the person who can just surrender to whatever comes up to the best of my ability. Do I do that every day? No. Would I like to? Eventually. But I have a lot of things that I am so attached to. I like the luxury of having a business and being able to go spend a couple months in Europe and explore. And that's my dream version of creating my reality, so to speak.

But I'm pointing out that, all of that is to say that the unknown is for sure the place that we are afraid of. You were saying that we get into discomfort, that's why we don't break out. And it's like, but if and when-- and this is one of the many reasons I love Joe Dispenza. In addition to being such a radiant guy, he just tells the truth and like you can feel it when he speaks the truth because you know he's from historic, and he has that power like Gandhi, that he's actually done it, he's done the work, he's lived, you can just feel it. And that's why he's packing practically stadiums full of people. And he says, when you surrender to the unknown, he'll say, for example, something like surrender to the unknown, it's like the journey begins. The date with the divine begins and your life becomes this amazing, magical experience where we have to be willing to surrender what we know like Jesus taught in favor of something much greater.

Luke Storey:   [01:28:51] This podcast would not be possible without our friends over at Just Thrive Health. And they've been with the show for quite a while now and one of the sponsors that I feel most grateful and proud to support and present to you. In so doing, I rare like to clown on competitive products. It's not really my style to say, oh, this brand is the best and the rest of them suck. But I must be honest, as someone who has tried to fix my gut in numerous ways, especially with a lot of very expensive probiotics over the years, I have to say that most probiotics I've ever tried were a complete waste of time, energy, and money with the exception of the Just Thrive probiotic.

What makes Just Thrive probiotics so special is that they're spore based, and this allows them to survive the treacherous journey into your GI tract where they can make themselves at home and do what they're supposed to do. And for this reason, it's a really unique and incredible product. It's also something kids at just about any age can take. Parents can sprinkle it into the food or drinks of little ones. It can also be baked or fried up to 455 degrees and still retain 100% potency. Isn't that crazy? It's also a deal for pregnant moms to be to support a healthy microbiome for themselves and their babies. Newborns get their first big dose of microbes at birth while traveling through the birth canal. 

It also contains a very special strain of bacteria that can maintain its effectiveness when taken with antibiotics. Now talk about crazy awesome. That's one of the issues when you're taking antibiotics, if you're in a position to have to do so is that they're going to ultimately cause some dysbiosis, to say the least. I'm going to I'm going to put it politely there. 

So I'm one again, who wasted so much money trying to take probiotics during a cycle of antibiotics, which is probably futile. However, it's not with Just Thrive spore-based probiotics. So if you want to check this out, I highly recommend that you do. So if you want to get your hands on some of these Just Thrive probiotics, here's what you do, go to justthrivehealth.com/luke, that's justthrivehealth.com/luke. And of course, we've got a discount for you. It's 15% and the code there is LUKE15 at justthrivehealth.com.

Matt Maruca:  [01:31:07] So with that, would you like to return to this original question?

Luke Storey:   [01:31:13] I was so glad that it was you this morning. And I didn't have any notes or like any framework of reference at all. And I was like, I totally don't need to with Matt, because I know we'll just shoot the shit and hopefully some golden nuggets will emerge from that and they definitely have. But yeah, I'm personally curious. As I said, I just moved finally. I have moved a couple times in the past year, first to Texas and into a temporary apartment while we worked in this house, the house that I just moved.

And I realized I have so much shit, bro, like boxes and boxes of extension cords and biohacking things. And if you saw the supplements in my kitchen, I think I'm going to make a video of it because it's so ridiculous largely because the work I do, a lot of people send me stuff and I want to try it out. So I throw it in the corner and eventually do. But I have so much stuff. And when I look at your lifestyle, I literally I'm so attached to the things that quote unquote, "belong to me" temporarily because you can't take it with you. So it's not like a materialism in the sense like, oh, I have to have the new big screen TV and the Porsche. I've never really been that guy. But I just tend to accumulate things that are just creature comforts. They just make things easier. I just ordered on Amazon that I need this new handheld Black and Decker little vacuum because every once in a while there's--

Matt Maruca:  [01:32:41] The Dust buster.

Luke Storey:   [01:32:40] Yeah, you know what I'm saying? I'm like, that type of shit, just utilitarian things that I think make life more convenient, but ultimately become a hindrance when it comes time to move and organizing things. And I look at your lifestyle and I think, I literally, I don't think I could do that. I think I'm too attached to all my gadgets and all my toys and tools to just take a laptop and go on the road and run my life from there seems terrifying. What if I need that one supplement? Like I got a sore throat, I need my iodine spray. Well, we don't have that in Costa Rica. You know what I mean? I'm just so attached to my stuff.

And I'm not faulting myself for that. It's just a self-awareness. And when I see someone living a lifestyle that so contrasted in that regard, although we're aligned on so many other things, I just think how do you do that? When I go on a vacation, I just went on a trip on a boat and they said pack light. And I'm like, light packing for me is like heavy packing for average person. Now I have all this shit. And I'm on this boat, and I'm like, do I really need all this stuff? And I did. I used most of the things, whatever they were. You need three pairs of shorts because what if the one gets lost, etc.

But the prospect of just cruising around with a backpack and a laptop, I see people like you do that, I'm like, how the hell do you do that? So that's my question. Do you actually have an apartment anywhere? Do you have a storage unit? Do you own shit? Speaking of Untethered, have you untethered yourself from all physical possessions and are just like living that lien as you appear to be?

Matt Maruca:  [01:34:14] No, I have I have stuff. I own things. As I understand it, we would have to be willing to let go of those things to be truly free. You can have the Dust buster and enjoy it, but maintaining the consciousness that  it's not even yours, and it's going to be gone eventually anyway. So I feel very fortunate that unintentionally my life became a great teacher to force me, so to speak, to learn these lessons young and quickly. And yes, the single hardest thing I've done in the last five years now running the business was not running or doing anything with the business. It's actually packing and unpacking. It has been any point that I needed to pack, unpack, or repack emotionally, mentally, mentally, spiritually, that has been the most demanding task by quite a bit, actually.

And I'm not sure why other than that there is this deep sense of surrender that I have to be willing to make if I'm going to go somewhere for many months, and like, basically just I go through every single item, and I apply tremendous amounts of energy to like, do I need this? Or do I want this? Or on what grounds do I even take? Everything in my life has become a question of, on what grounds does one make decisions, because, given-- by the time I was 18, I had enough income to be able to go wherever I want, and do whatever I want. That's done total location freedom, not necessarily time freedom, because I've had to run the business, but working on that part, the time freedom part, but location freedom and financial freedom for like, I wouldn't buy Lamborghinis left and right, but just to be able to do the things I'd want to do. Tim Ferriss had the target monthly income and the four-hour workweek, and I'm like, set something that seem reasonable. It's like, made it. So it's like, that's pretty good.

The question always became, like, in every situation, packing my bag, going to live somewhere, be somewhere, being with people or not being with people, eating certain diet. The question has always come back to, for me, on what grounds does one make any decisions in this world? It's not what is the right decision because I've come to a place where I don't believe there is per se, a right decision. But the question is just like, how does anyone make any decisions at all given unlimited choices completely?

And the best answer I've been able to come to so far is like, you just-- it's funny because it's like a common cliché, but it's like, you are best served by following your heart. But to break that down a little bit more, because that didn't mean anything to me for a long time, with the context of our conversation that we've gone super deep into, I would have to get to a place of that, like, the best outcome would be to get to a place of like, how do I want my whole life to be? How do I want my whole life to be? Abundance, love, joy. Get to that state and get through whatever I have to get through to get to that state, and then make the decisions from that place of that clarity perspective, the witness, as Michael Singer would call it, the true awareness, not with all the wavering the mind or the ego, but just that true, clear perspective. 

And that's when it's like, it's crazy, because I'll get sometimes to that state and I'll feel like it's a good feeling. But the same feeling that I would feel if I had like a crush on a girl and I had to talk to her in middle school like that. It's actually like a sympathetic as Dispenza describes it, a sympathetic arousal that starts in the lower energy centers but it's a warmth. It's not bad. It feels good. It's like, ooh, it's like butterflies, or like cooties, or whatever that feeling is. It's like, it's warming. I think you get what I'm getting at. And it's like excitement. It's like true visceral excitement. And that's when I know I'm on the right path. 

And people say go with your gut. I've only experienced that a few times, a handful of times in my life that I've actually-- it's not just for the first time connected together. When people say, go with your gut, that's the feeling they're describing, because you feel it in your gut, and your heart chakra center. And so if the decision's made from that place, I also feel like this is the best feeling. I love when I get there. It's like, am I allowed to do that? It's like, break. It's like, I've broken the upper limit. It's like, something feels so good. And I'm like, Is that legal? Can I actually be that happy?

I actually sometimes have worried that the law is going to come after me for being too happy. Seriously, that just wouldn't be legal. And they're actually seemingly working on that now, but that's a different conversation. So anyway, as far as the packing, the packing is hard for me because if I don't do it from that higher state, I end up bringing all this stuff. And it's like, do I decide what I need? Well, I don't really need anything. So if I go off, what do I need, I'm not going to bring anything. Do I want it? Well, yeah, I want it, but I might want to bring a lot of things. So there's some balance of like, what's practical, what makes sense what will be better to just leave behind and take extra cash and bring it on the road and buy it if I need it when I get to wherever I'm going to be and then I accumulate stuff, so then I have to unpack and repack again every couple of weeks or month, more likely every couple of months.

I do have an apartment, but I did it for like three or four years, which was difficult and I found that for me, maybe not for everyone, but to be super nomadic, the idea of having an anchor it's just all energy. So like I had to get to a place and this was very difficult and I went through like a serious heartbreak situation that led me to this point to say like I was in so much-- my heart was so open, but I was in so much heart pain that I finally was willing to say like, Matt, I'll do anything to take care of you, speaking to myself almost from the witness to the third person of my person label Matt.

I got to this place where I finally was like so vulnerable that it took so much pain to break through to like, I need to put myself first finally, no matter the money because it was always again a scarcity and worry about the money that was my challenge to overcome. For other people, it's different. There's a quote, "Every man's burden is the heaviest," it doesn't quite apply here exactly. But it's like, for other people, you were saying, for them their challenge is the Rolexes and the Ferraris, but for you, your level of challenge might be like the creature comforts and overcoming that whereas for someone else, it might be overcoming the billions or whatever they're spending on different things.

So I finally just said, it doesn't matter about the money. The money is going to be fine. I'm going to get a place for myself to have a home, a place to be based. And I had to make the deal with myself, even if I'm gone 10 months of the year, even if I'm gone 12 months of the year, I'm not going to get myself and I put an energy because it's energy first and feel like how great would it feel to know that I could go anywhere in the world. And if I'm pooped, I can catch a direct flight back to wherever I want to be, to my home, and be there and safe.

Previously I did have a storage unit for some time, which was a great start compared to not having a storage unit. And before that I had l stuff that was at my parents’ house. So I do believe like, at the minimum, for someone to have a storage unit makes sense if they're nomadic. And then you just have to be really intentional and conscious about what you're doing each step of the way. For me and the level of what I'm doing like running a business, to have a place that I actually know I can fall back to and sleep in a bed and have a cozy space. It doesn't have to be super crazy, fancy and nice. I mean, for me, I wanted it to be a place that I'd be very happy to go back to, but finally leading with energy led me back to the right place where the home opened itself to me.

And yeah, and it's been so nice to be gone. For the first time I was gone for seven months traveling, five months in Europe, two months in Costa Rica. But I enjoyed it. I felt much more because I had done myself that favor of saying like, I'm going to have a home so that if I felt like some stressors, some challenges, because inevitably they do, that's part of why travel is so awesome because it forces you to grow and overcome yourself, and that's why I love it so much, but I knew if I needed to, I could always go back to my place. But I didn't because it was like I knew I had it. And somehow knowing that I had it was enough for me to be like, no, I'm good and I'm just going to keep going on this epic adventure.

And I met some amazing people. I was traveling in Europe. I visited some really good friends in Russia, in Turkey, in Italy, in Germany, buddy of mines, the second most expensive soccer player in the whole world. He's like the next Ronaldo. Basically he plays for huge German team and all the clubs in England and Spain want him. And I visited him in Germany. It's like, that was the cherry on top of an already amazing trip. But if I hadn't been willing to push through some of my challenging emotions that were all internal anyway, I wouldn't have been able to get to some of the amazing experiences that I was blessed with.

Luke Storey:   [01:43:00] Well, thank you so much for taking the time out here. So great to see you. And I'm so glad we recorded this because I know if you and I had just sat down and we're just like catching up, we would have had the exact same conversation.

Matt Maruca:  [01:43:12] Yeah, for sure.

Luke Storey:   [01:43:13] So the fact that we get to record it and share some of the insights that you're arriving at, and your journey is really, really special. So thank you so much. And it's been fun to see you. When I met you, I think you were 19.

Matt Maruca:  [01:43:24] I was 18 the first time we met. I had just turned 18.  

Luke Storey:   [01:43:28] For those that haven't heard the story, I did a speaking gig in New York City. And Matt was there and he comes up to me afterward and he's like, hey, man, I should be on your podcast. I was like, okay, who are you? And he started busting out stuff about light and magnetism and EMF and all this. And I was like, holy shit, this dude is smart. He's super cool. And so we did it, you know.

Matt Maruca:  [01:43:48] Thank you.

Luke Storey:   [01:43:48]  To see how you've just grown and evolved and to watch you, what you describe here today is moving to bed out of the physical into the metaphysical and just seeing how that's enriched your life is really beautiful to watch. So thank you for sharing all that today.

Matt Maruca:  [01:44:04] Thank you so much, Luke. I appreciate it. And I'll just close with saying that, Luke actually has a very special place in my heart and in my life and business as well, because it was that same night, not only did that podcast that came out six months later after Paleo F(X) 2018 where we had a booth and I think you were speaking and so on, but that same night, you had asked my friend Brian and I, where did you guys get those cool shades? And we had them custom made. And so I told you, yeah, I'll connect with this tinting company. And we had about five or six emails back and forth and it was really difficult.

And I had seen an article about how to tint your own glasses with this particular tint. And that's when I finally said to you like, you know what? We'll just do it for you. Just send me your glasses. And your 70 bucks you paid on September 3, I think 2017 was the first income Ra Optics ever had and then I use that to buy the hot plate and the beaker and the tint bottle that we use to tint, the first pair that we use to tint the subsequent next 100 pairs that we used to buy more hot plates and beakers. And we started it all in the garage, but truly, if it weren't for your divine request of that particular need, the business probably wouldn't exist. I mean, it'd be something different, but it wouldn't exist as it does now. So I owe you a huge thanks.

Luke Storey:   [01:45:17] It’s crazy. I still have and wear that same pair. I can't believe I haven't lost them. See the way I am with trinkets and shit like I hang on to it. But yeah, they're awesome. I get compliments on them all the time. Let me get some of those. I'm like, they were just a custom pair Matt made for me. So yeah, thanks, dude.  

Matt Maruca:  [01:45:34] Thank you, Luke.

Luke Storey:   [01:45:35] Good to see you, man.

Matt Maruca:  [01:45:35] And thank you for being the best brother.

Luke Storey:   [01:45:37] Enjoy your time here in Austin. Hopefully we could spend a little more time free split.

Matt Maruca:  [01:45:41] Amen. Same to you.

Luke Storey:   [01:45:43] Cheers.

Matt Maruca:  [01:45:43] God bless. Take care, everyone.

Luke Storey:   [01:45:48] Okay, podcast friends, the bar is closed. As they say, we don't care where you go, but you can't stay here. Well, at least that's what they say in the world's Grammy star bars. I love Matt so much. And I'm guessing if you made it this far, you share that sentiment. He's not only super bright and knowledgeable, but he's also just such a gem of a human. I just love that kid. I can call him a kid because I probably could be his dad actually. I'm 51. He's early 20s. Do the math. It could work out. But he's just an awesome man, let me put it like that if you ever listened to this man. I see as a kid but also as a man. Don't worry about it.

As a side note, Matt also advised me on launching my own blue blocking eyewear company Gilded, which in itself says a lot since that's exactly what his company does. In other words, he doesn't live by the competition scarcity mindset, which I find really refreshing. And I fully support his mission. His glasses are awesome, and I still wear mine from time to time. You can get yourself some of these badass Ra Optics glasses by visiting lukestorey.com/raoptics. And if you use the code LUKE over there, that's going to give you 10% off.

On to next week's episode. This is one about which I am very excited. Ironically or not, it's show 420, bro, with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, otherwise known as Gurudev. It's called Mystic Speaks: Reincarnation, Past Lives, and Spiritual Simplicity. And I got to say I was blown away by his presence and the grounded nature of his teachings. And since the interview next week is a bit shorter than usual, we've also included a very deep 20-minute meditation he created at the end of the show.

So make sure to subscribe to the Life Stylist podcast on your podcast app so next week show hits your feed right away. And if you want me to email the audio, show notes link, and video for every show, I just need your email address. To get on the podcast release list, all you need to do is visit lukestorey.com/newsletter and enter your name and email, takes about 30 seconds. I'm going to fire that off to you every Tuesday. Okay, I'm out. Blessing to you and yours until we meet again.

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