Aubrey Marcus - Master Your Mind, Master Your Life: How To Stay Confident & Defeat Your Inner Critic

Full transcript: Aubrey Marcus on London Real

2:18 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Aubrey Marcus, the best-selling author, biohacker, broadcaster and entrepreneur. Your company, Onnit, specializes in total human optimization using a holistic philosophy that encompasses physical, mental and spiritual well-being. You are a passionate advocate of the use of psychedelic medicine to heal trauma, reset the mind and overcome addiction.

2:41 You host the Aubrey Marcus podcast with over 10 million downloads and have been featured in Entrepreneur and Forbes magazine. You’ve also appeared an incredible 17 times on the Joe Rogan Experience, dating back to 2010. Your first book, Own the Day, Own Your Life, a New York Times bestseller, and your upcoming book, Master Your Mind, Master Your Life, provides a roadmap to free ourselves from resistance, face our inner critic and overcome trauma. Aubrey, welcome to London Real.

3:08 Ah, it’s a real pleasure, man. Happy to be here. Amen, it’s great to have you. You know, we’ve been trading emails for nine years. I still remember when we started, we were bouncing emails back and forth with you.

3:21 You know, for people that don’t know, we were an honest affiliate with Alpha Brain in back in 2011. We were plugged in and we were always wanting to get you on the show, and I’m just so glad we finally made it happen. We’re just on time, right on time. Ryan made it happen. It’s perfect.

3:40 And I also want to say something else. You did an episode with Joe Rogan in 2010, August 2010. It was episode 46, and I watched that episode. Aubrey, I was still working in the City of London in finance. I was a credit derivatives broker, and you planted a seed in my mind that day.

4:00 Aubrey, that was the first time I heard the word ayahuasca, and it planted that seed in my mind. When we started the show, some like a year later, when we started London Real after I left, it was about five or six months later that I had my first ayahuasca experience, and it became almost kind of part of the show. I remember thinking, there’s no way I can go back, because the Bank of England’s never gonna allow me. If I talked about drugs, we thought we were gonna get arrested.

4:27 You know, we didn’t know, because these days everyone and their mother, they go live and do psychedelics. But back then there weren’t many people talking about it. So I just wanted to thank you for doing that, because it changed my life. It changed the show. And recently I went back in, about two years ago.

4:43 I went down to Soltara in Costa Rica. I know you know those guys, and we made a whole movie about it called Reconnect, and it was really powerful. So it’s all because of you. So thank you, Aubrey. I appreciate that.

4:54 I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, this was a big passion of mine. It started when I actually graduated high school, so this was 21 years ago and I got to go on a vision quest with the traditional shaman who took me on a psilocybin journey out in the mountains of New Mexico, and I was absolutely terrified, because at that point, I mean, there’s virtually nobody talking about it. There’s a couple, like, kind of shady resources and a few people who’ve talked about it from, like, the ’60s.

5:20 You know, but there wasn’t anything that I could really sink my teeth into and understand it better. So I remember grabbing a rock from the land and I was like, as long as I hold this, I’ll remember that I exist. You know, I was just terrified, and then I took the mushrooms, and at that point, you know, I was a staunch atheist, like had no spiritual foundation, and I’m holding this and I just feel my body evaporate and just exercise pure awareness in that feeling of just being completely the essence of myself, and I was like, oh, I gotta rethink some stuff.

5:54 Like, I gotta change my perspective. My paradigm was completely altered from that point, and that got me on the journey. And of course, from the psilocybin, then went to ayahuasca and boga and wachuma and all the great plant teachers of the world. But I feel just super fortunate that I was, you know, cross paths with that shaman and was able to have that experience, because it absolutely changed the course of my life, and then of course allowed me to change the course of other lives, like yourself.

6:18 Yeah, because it makes sense, because I didn’t know about this vision quest until I started doing extra research for this today, and you know, it makes sense now, because you were speaking with, like, kind of knowledge and authority when you were you know, talking to Joe 10 years ago, so you would obviously had experience with psychedelics and that, as opposed to the guy that just did ayahuasca like a year before, and that could come out in the way you spoke about it. But I was wondering, like, you know, like you said, there’s no YouTube back then, there’s no articles, you can’t Google search it and so you had no reference, which is hard, because even when I did it, there were people saying that it was you know, helpful for you, but back when you did it, I mean, most people thought magic mushrooms were for hippies and weirdos, and it probably caused brain damage, and, you know, there weren’t great narratives out there.

7:06 The narrative was, you will find the window from the highest place you can find and think you’re going to fly and jump off and fly like that was the story that everybody was telling. Yeah, and of course that story is absolutely not true. It’s about the last thing you want to do on mushrooms. But, you know, it took a little bit of courage then, but I was also, I also felt really guided. You know, whatever that thing is, whatever that capital P potential that we have, that’s just always whispering in our ear and asking us, inviting us to more in our life, that was certainly present then, and it was just, fortunately, I listened, you know, because there’s been plenty of times where I’ve ignored that little whisper in my ear, and that doesn’t always work out so well.

7:45 But that time I did. How did you know, not to fight it, because it’s, I mean, the usual instinct. The first time I tried psilocybin, I was actually in Amsterdam, and I just fought it the whole time, and it was really stressful, and I told myself never again, and that was kind of seven, eight years before the ayahuasca. So I was kind of traumatized. Obviously it was giving me signals that I couldn’t process, because I was all in my head back then.

8:10 But, like, for you to kind of allow yourself to go on that ride, I don’t know, it seems a little advanced. That’s the importance of having a really good guide. You know, the shaman had been doing it for 40 years, so she really coached me through the mantra of the psychedelic explorer: witness and allow. And gave me metaphors. She’s like, listen, you’re going to be in a movie theater, and it’s going to be a full 4D movie theater where you’re going to experience these things somatically, and you’re going to see things and your job is to just sit in the seat and eat popcorn and let it happen, you know, and not try to do anything, and that really stuck with me.

8:47 I was like, all right, movie theater, like I can, I can do this. I’ll hold my rock, I’ll sit in the movie theater, I’ll watch what happens. You know, it’s just the right kind of energy and the right words, and she was sitting there right with me, so I felt really comfortable, obviously only at the start, and then she left after a little while, so I could have my own journey on my own. But it was, I really give a lot of credit to her as a guide, and as you know, the importance of, like, the ayahuasca and the curanderos, and the curanderos, like the people who are officiating ceremony, they’re incredibly important, and they can make all the difference.

9:20 So doing some truffles in Amsterdam, or I guess you could do mushrooms back then, when you did it, that’s just a different, it’s a different game, you know, because you don’t know how much you took. You don’t know if you took too much, you don’t know if you took not enough, you’re not probably in the optimal environment. So that’s not the ideal way to get your feet wet, and for a lot of us, it’s the only way. And just following some of these same guidelines: witness and allow, be in the movie theater, you know, make sure you do your research on the dose, and hopefully have somebody who can at least sit for you, even if they’re not an experienced guide or shaman, just be there and be like, hey man, it’s all going to be all right.

9:55 And if you get some ideas in your head, like the room is bugged and people are after you, which I call, like, the usual freakout that people have. You know, some kind of paranoia that comes up, they can be like, listen, man, you’re experiencing the usual. Like, don’t worry about it, it’s all good, we got you, and that’s, that’ll make all the difference. Yeah, that’s really good advice. I was, I did the typical Amsterdam thing.

10:15 I was on a canal, did the whole tub of the raw mushrooms, and then it all kicked in. We barely made it back to the hotel room, me and my buddy, you know, as it was, as the wallpaper was coming off the walls, and then we got back. But again, no guidance. And then when I went back in later, I had great guidance, like you said. I had a shaman, or, you know, someone holding the space.

10:37 I had a guy named Simon Powell on the show back in the day. I think he has a book called The Psilocybin Solution, and he always said, I remember, he, he said it really loud in the episode. He said, be with it. Whatever it is, be with it. And I remember him, his words echoing back to me even in ceremony, which is always hard to believe that you’ll ever be able to remember those lessons, you know, when you’re in the experience, but be with it.

11:01 So don’t try to force it away, don’t even try to run away from it or don’t even hope it’s over. Be with it. For me, it’s usually a lot of emotions and pain and I just gotta be with it, and then breathe. That’s my equivalent of your rock, I think. For me it’s just breathe.

11:17 When you breathe, if you keep breathing, you’re always going to be okay. So it’s such an important lesson. I mean, anything you resist persists. That’s the old Marcus Aurelius quote, right? But it’s so, it’s so true in psychedelics, and psychedelics is like a microcosm.

11:33 It’s like our little Doctor Strange world where we get to work out how we might deal with the regular, you know, normal waking world when we’re in these experiences. So we learn that that thing that we put so much resistance into is going to be fueled by that energy. So you’re having a dark vision, a dark experience, like, the worst thing you can do is try and change it. The best thing you can do is just love it and try to appreciate the beauty of that aspect of polarity, as hard as it is.

11:59 You know, I remember in my darkness retreat, which was something I’m sure we’ll get a chance to talk about, which was an incredible experience. Seven days, complete darkness, complete silence, and then it unlocked what absolutely felt like, I obviously can’t prove it, but an endogenous release of DMT. So I was in the vision state for about four days straight. Fortunately, I had a lot of experience, because there would be times where I would see the most horrific things, you know, in the blackness.

12:24 In these visions I would see, like, a wheat thresher that was just threshing over bodies of human beings. I would see, like, skulls, like all the skulls, and kind of imagery of destruction and death. And of course, like, you want to turn away, but there’s no way to turn away. You’re not even on a substance, so it’s not going to go away, ever, unless you sit there and then start to see the beauty of that, you know, destruction, which then leads to creation, right?

12:52 Like, the death that leads to life. And that cycle, as I say, in Hinduism, you know, Shiva destroys and Brahma creates. Like, that is the cycle of life. And until I was able to just appreciate that, then the wheat thresher goes away, and then the rainbow comes in and I’m sitting in a beautiful meadow with beautiful trees and flowers that are blooming, and bees, and it just changes the minute that I can apply appreciation and love, and it’s just like the medicine, and your own consciousness is creating this experience for you to experience, a lesson to learn, how to love that thing which you judge, that thing which you find abhorrent.

13:26 Can you love that too? And that’s the question it’s asking you. And if you say yes, I can, then it’s like good job, son. Like, we’ll carry on. Here’s your reward.

13:35 And, like you said, you can bring that stuff into the real world too, and when you get to these uncomfortable situations, you can be like, well, first of all, it’s not a tenth of what it feels like when I’m in. But now I can be like, yeah, like you said, learn from it. Can you be with it anyways? What’s the lesson here? Yeah, all that stuff.

13:56 Let’s talk about the dark experience, because I mean, we’re here, I might as well go into all these experiences. I heard you talk a little bit about on one of your podcasts. It quickly made me remember something. So I’ve had a guest on London Real maybe five or six times. His name is Master Mantak Chia, and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard him?

14:15 Funny enough, he’s got our most popular clip on YouTube with like five million plus views. And the first time I had him on my show, yeah, people love sex. And I’m, you know, I’m from an American Puritan upbringing, and well you know, we didn’t talk about sex much in my house in San Diego, even though I think my mom had the joy of sex book, which made me uncomfortable. But when he came on my show, he was talking about massaging the organs and the three gates for the women and multiple orgasms for men, and I was literally in the chair.

14:46 I could barely, you know, make it through the episode. And then I started listening and learning this stuff. I was like, this guy actually knows what he’s talking about. And on the fourth episode in, he said that his master, I think, I think he grew up in Thailand, actually. They used to do the darkness retreat to create DMT in their heads as well, and I had never heard him talk about this.

15:10 I mean, you know, again, we, I think we had to build a relationship up. And he said, yeah, we used to black out this room, and they used to go in the caves back in the day, and they would do the endogenous release of DMT. And this isn’t like a psychedelic guy. I don’t think he’s had ayahuasca ceremonies, and he described it in such detail that I believed him. And so then, now that you talk about it, it’s really interesting.

15:31 So that’s my only context of the darkness. Can you tell me about your experience and how you did it, and have you ever heard of someone in the East talking about that? I have, and it’s, it’s just one of those things. People go into a cave, but you don’t really understand the reason for the cave until you start to dive a little deeper and understand this is a part of so many different mystical traditions. And actually, the person who is facilitating for me in the darkness, she studied in the Hindu tradition, and she was meditating with her guru for 10 years, and then the guru, after doing it, you know, what she calls the hard way, meditating for 10 years, then opening up her vision state, and was able to, you know, see the deities and kind of interact in that, what we would call the astral plane.

16:13 Right? Then her guru is like, okay, now go into this cave. And she goes into the cave, and then within a few days she’s just permanently in that space. And she got out and she said she was pissed off. She was like, what what do you do to me?

16:27 You made me meditate for 10 years, and then you send me to the cave, and it’s so much easier, it just happens. And he’s like, yeah, I wanted you to learn how to do it on your own first, before you had this tool that could help bring it to you. So really, what you’re doing is you’re blocking out absolutely all light. So when people think, oh, it’s like solitary confinement, no, it’s not, because in solitary, it’s far more maddening, because you have a little bit of light that you can fixate on.

16:52 So instead of being in this womb of darkness, where everything is absolutely enrobed and it feels infinite unless you bump into something, you focus on the light. And I remember when they actually shut the doors and turned off all the lights. There was one little crack that was coming through the window, I guess one of the seals opened up. So I, like, ring the bell and come in, and it takes them a while to, like, get used to the light, the darkness as well, so they can see that little crack, and then they can fix it, put a piece of, like, black tape over it, because I was already fixating on that thing, you know?

17:23 That one little prick of light was too much. It ruined the whole experience, and so they block everything out. You’re in absolute silence, absolute darkness. You memorize the room first. The food is dropped in a blacked-out hallway outside of the room.

17:35 They ring a bell, you open up the door, stumble your way around, get the tray, and it was really, you know, pretty bland food, raw vegan, just enough sustenance. Where are you, by the way? I’m in near Frankfurt, Germany, so a house, a house that they kind of want for this, in Frankfurt. Why there, and who’s they? So there’s only about 30 darkness retreats in the whole world.

17:59 There’s not that many, and this one seemed to be the best. Now, the ones in the U.S., there’s, you know, somebody’s attic in Ohio, and, like, somebody there. There’s nothing really here in the U.S. And then there’s actual caves. If you go down to Guatemala, you can go into a real cave and do it that way, but you’re sleeping on, you know, pretty much the ground of the cave, with a little, like, straw, like they made it real traditional.

18:23 Okay. In Europe there’s, in Czech Republic in particular, it’s actually used as a therapy for psychiatric conditions. So they call it terapinoy, or something like that. And so it’s actually the majority of the retreats are in Europe, and this one just happened to be in Frankfurt, which seemed to be the best. And my friend Akshay who was the one who told me about it, you know, really explained, having been there and having done it.

18:47 And he actually went to my high school. We did a podcast together, and that kind of got me excited about it. I had that calling, that kind of feeling I had when I first went to do ayahuasca. Like, oh, I have to do that. He was the one who gave me, and this is the place he went.

19:00 So we go to this little town called Sakban Walden, outside of Germany. The website’s darknessretreat.net, I think, something like that. And beautiful little place, and you know, such a lovely facilitator who’s like deeply steeped in the practice, you know, learned from her mentor guru, and then been practicing for a while, and just a beautiful, like, Airbnb vibe. You know, simple, but a nice little Airbnb vibe. Everything’s blacked out, but there was a window that you could open for fresh air, because they didn’t have a lot of ventilation in there, so you had to open the window.

19:32 So you had one of those Mindfold masks, which is like a psychedelic explorer’s essential. The Mindfold blocks out absolutely all lights. This foam thing, you can leave your eyes open or closed. It’s like for a boga more than anything, right? Yeah, exactly.

19:45 So I would open the window just to get fresh air, which was also something that was difficult, because when things got hard later on, I could think, all I got to do is open the window and look out, and all the visions will stop. All the challenging s*** will end. But fortunately I didn’t do that. But yeah, so that’s the setup in the room. So I memorized everything, figured out where the toilet is, you know, figured out where my clothes are, where the essentials are, kind of got it all, got it all sorted.

20:13 It ended up going a little haywire, because I memorized everything based upon a rectangular rug that was in a rectangular room, and at some point I shifted that rug, I guess moving around. So the rectangular rug was at an angle to the room, so I was running into s*** for like the last four days of the whole retreat, as my bearings were off. But so that’s the room. The first few days nothing happens from the visionary state. It’s just the monotony of the darkness and the silence, and you just, I’m just thinking about things, going through, having hypothetical arguments with people that, you know, I have grievances with, having, I mean, I decided everything.

20:51 I was gonna move houses in Austin. I changed careers three times. I, like, started seven projects, I quit five. Things like I was just working through all this stuff, trying to solve all of my internal angst externally, which was, you know, what we normally do. And then about day, you know, the night of day three, I started getting these flashing blinking lights in my eyes, just like a pulsing flashing light.

21:18 I was like, all right, that’s interesting. And then by day four, the visionary state opened up, and it was like the twilight of ayahuasca. It wasn’t full-on peak, where you just feel like the light pouring through the top of your head, that kaleidoscope, that chrysanthemum, that’s just this menagerie of colors and beasts and different things that are coming. It wasn’t quite that intense, but it was like the kind of the come down, or the come on of that experience, and it just stayed consistently for the next four days.

21:48 And I had my Oura ring tracking my sleep. I was sleeping maybe two hours a night. I didn’t know what was day or night. I knew that there was some roosters that I could hear, but they seemed to crow at all different types of the times of the day, day and morning. So I was just in there, and I had some incredibly profound visions and experiences that, you know, stick with me, as so real and so instructive and valuable.

22:15 You know, I really credit the darkness retreat as probably my most transformative psychedelic experience, at least in the last you know, seven years or so. Wow. So it’s almost like a little Vipassana in there too. I mean, have you done that? Where, I mean, Vipassana, I guess, for people that don’t know, and I haven’t done it, but it’s 10 days, no talking, you know, no devices, no distractions, and you meditate a lot, but again, of course, there’s light and there’s people around but, you know, I know Tim Ferriss has said that was as challenging, if not more than one of his hardest psychedelic experiences.

22:48 So you kind of have that too in the dark, right? Yep. You do, because you’re not talking to anybody. You don’t have any sound. You don’t have anything to do.

22:58 You don’t have any sight. It’s a complete restriction of all of your senses except for the sense of touch and taste when you’re eating the food. But as I said, the food was really bland, which I understand why they had the food like that, because when you’re in the visionary state, like, nobody in their right mind would eat food at the peak of an ayahuasca journey, right? Like the peak of a mushroom. It’s the last thing you want to do.

23:19 But at the peak of this visionary state, I would eat food, and I would absolutely see the food that I was eating. So I would eat a mushroom, and I would see these mushrooms, like, coming up, pushing up out of the ground in my third eye, like crystal clear. I would eat a broccoli, and I would see it. But everything, though, I would soap up. I would go take a shower and soap up, and I would see the suds just flood my third-eye vision.

23:40 I would take a s*** and I would see the feces as I was like, f*** it. It was like, it was unbelievable, the access I had with that kind of endogenous DMT, which they say comes from the flood of melatonin from all your photoreceptors being shut off. And so the contrast of your photoreceptors usually being activated and limiting your melatonin, to then being completely shut off and producing a ton of melatonin which is triggered by the darkness, which is one of the reasons why we restrict blue lights before bed, etc., to get more melatonin.

24:09 But you get a flood of it, and then somehow in the chemical process the melatonin converts to DMT. Is what they said, but of course it would require a vivisection of the brain to actually see if that was happening. I don’t think anybody’s signing up for that program. But it was unreal. And this is pretty predictable.

24:28 I mean, the people that go to this retreat, does this happen to everybody or most people? That’s what I hear. You know, I haven’t she said that this is usual now for me. It happened a little bit sooner. Some people, it’s around day five, so they always recommend you’re in there for a week.

24:44 Okay. But for me it was day three, and I’m grateful, because actually the first few days with nothing happening were harder, which makes me think that with a Vipassana that would also be incredibly challenging, because you can still see, you still have access to a variety of different things, and the vision state isn’t open. I mean, the one thing about being in the vision state is not boring. You know, like you’re dealing with stuff. I had, you know, I was reconciling stuff with my father.

25:09 I was, I had a vision of Buddha that came to me, and it brought some wisdom. You have these things that are happening, different souls, different connections that you’re able to have with people who you love or people who have passed. It’s infinitely interesting, which I think, you know, the challenging part of the Vipassana is just the kind of sitting with your thoughts without the access to that kind of spiritual dimension, which was actually beneficial.

25:35 Now challenging for sure, but also not monotonous. Yeah, just having flashbacks to my vision states, you know. So my first three ayahuasca ceremonies were actually done at the old London Real studios, and the shaman actually came there, and we would do it overnight, and she would sing, and she was the best shaman, because when I would get sick I would run in the bathroom and I would lock the door and I would purge in there, and she would just keep singing in the other room.

26:05 She, you know, a great shaman doesn’t knock on the door, doesn’t ask if you’re okay. She just kept the space and allowed me to do that. But once I had my, my difficult woodshed moments and purged, I was always in that state that you’re kind of talking about, where then I’m kind of just going out and the trauma’s kind of gone, and I’m now just looking at all the amazing possibilities in the universe in my life. And I remember just laying on my bathroom floor, which felt like, you know, felt like the presidential suite at the Ritz, or something to that point.

26:35 And like having those moments. Yeah, and then you realize that a lot of the things that you were thinking about in your waking life, like everything I decided for the first three days, by day five when I’m in the vision state and have access to that superpower that we get when we have that kind of clarity from the shift in perspective, it was like, oh, I don’t need to do any of this stuff. Like, my life is amazing, and that was the overwhelming lesson, is how absolutely incredible and blessed and beautiful my life is, and how sad and how much grief I felt for not enjoying my life the way I could, because I’m always thinking about something I did in the past that could have done better, something I could do in the future, you know, that I could plan for and plot for.

27:19 But in the present moment, my life has been and is absolutely stunning. And you know, I hadn’t spent nearly enough time appreciating that. You get used to things, and then you just, your mind will start wandering to the past or the future. And so that was the real gift of this is when that blindfold came off. I was just sobbing, just weeping, looking at the beautiful world that I had access to, like the visions that I was able to see and hear and do and explore, and also the sadness of recognizing I’d let so many of the moments of that, like that in my life, just pass me by.

27:57 So if I look back now, I have one singular regret. The only regret, I wouldn’t change a thing, because I’ve learned so much from everything, all of the mistakes, all the failures, all the explorations. The only thing I would change is just to take more time to enjoy my life in the present moment and just really appreciate everything that I have, because it’s as I said it’s absolutely stunning, and that’s the case for most of us. You know, our lives are just an absolute gem, and we’re just not there appreciating it.

28:30 Yeah, super well said. You mentioned that that experience was like more powerful than anything in, say, the past seven years in the psychedelic realm. I was wondering if you could maybe talk about, you know, the past 10 years of your experiences, and I’ll just quickly share mine. I mean, after those three ceremonies for me in 2012, and I had the first one, which, again, was really out of my comfort zone, but I got a few lessons about you know, I was dating a woman at a time, and she had a daughter, and I was seeing them but I made a decision then to move into them and start a family and bring them into my life, and I forced myself to do two more ceremonies that year, because I knew it was uncomfortable, but I knew I had to go in and just force myself to come to terms with some more things, and parents’ divorce and a lot of that stuff.

29:17 And so I did that year, and then I played around with some psilocybin, you know, I listened to Terence McKenna. I did some big doses, like four and a half grams, I think, as big as I did and I had some experiences, but a lot of it was machine elves and digging in my brain, and I never got those lessons that I got from ayahuasca. And you know, I tried DMT a couple times, but that was it, and then I stopped, and it wasn’t until two years ago that I went down to Soltara, and we were gonna make a movie, and I went down with Dennis McKenna.

29:51 And so of course, when I’m making a movie or doing a show, then I’ll go do it, right? So whatever it takes. But I got, you know, three of the most powerful experiences. I mean, one was the single most profound experience in my life, and I had an observation that for me, ayahuasca was the only psychedelic, I was, the mother of psychedelics. I mean, for me it was the one that always teaches me lessons.

30:13 I mean, literally, I have takeaways. Literally, I had like 10 things I needed to do with my life, and I know I need to go back, but I haven’t been back, and I know I’m gonna have to push myself to go back. So anyways, those are my experiences. I’m curious what yours are like, and what it’s like to hear me say that stuff. Well, I think, you know, I think you’re right.

30:34 I think ayahuasca is the, it’s the mother teacher, you know, and that’s what they call it in, you know, madrasito, like little mother, like the mother of all of the, all of the different plants down in the jungle. And of course they’re referring to the vine, but the vine mixed with the leaves creates the brew, and that we typically call ayahuasca, but it’s incredibly powerful. And I think one of the reasons why it’s so powerful is it’s working on two different aspects.

30:59 One, it’s working on your psyche and helping you explore different aspects of your psyche, but the other part is the purge, which is helping release where you’re storing that in the body. There’s a great book called The Body Keeps the Score, and in that book it talks about how we hold trauma in our body in different places, and I think that’s something that people overlook. You see a dog, and a dog runs into a screen door, runs into a window, or falls off something, immediately they shake.

31:25 Well, why do they shake? Well, they shake to get all that trauma out of their fascia, get all that memory. Well, some gnarly s*** happens to us. We don’t shake it out. We don’t ecstatic dance, we don’t scream it out, and we go run around, maybe we’ll hit the gym and work out, and that’s probably a healthy adaptation to that, but we’re storing so much of this most of us will just cry and like huddle up in our own room and not do the natural thing, which is to get this out of our body, you know, do some intense breathwork or some way that we can somatically release it.

31:54 But ayahuasca is doing that for us. It’s squeezing all our organs and pushing them all out, either up or down, one way or another, usually both. It’s going to come out of your body as you’re working the stuff out in your psyche, and there’s no other plants that really do it, you know, with that kind of double action, precision, other than ayahuasca. And of course the DMT, as a psychedelic, is pretty incredible. It’s in a league of its own.

32:22 It’s incred. It’s really unique what it gives you access to. It feels like it goes beyond your own psyche and opens you up to something that’s beyond your normal purview, like another whole dimensional access. Other psychedelics can do that, of course, and you can have that in the normal waking state as well. It’s not the only thing that can get you to the access of something that seems outside of what you can normally access, but ayahuasca does that regularly, and so some of the experiences that you have from that are really second to none.

32:56 And that’s not to downplay the other experiences from the other plants. They all have their own incredible value. It’s like know you have your favorite of the Avengers, but you appreciate all of them, you know? Like even Hawkeye, like he’s, he’s still got his skills, and he’s still dope. You know, so yeah, I know that’s a really good point.

33:15 Yeah, I remember I did three in Soltara, and the first one, it had been so long for me, and what, what typically happened in the past was my stomach would hurt so much during the ceremony, but also back in the day I was drinking a lot, so I think that’s why. And so this time my stomach didn’t hurt, and I was, but I always hate to purge. You know, maybe it’s also my control factor, so I was like, I’m not gonna throw up, I’m not gonna throw up, which is the worst way to go into a ceremony, but I didn’t, the first time, but then the next night, I mean, for example, actually after the first ceremony, Dennis McKenna and Daniel Cleland, the guy who runs it down there came over and they were like, that was really weak medicine, and I was like, really?

33:51 It seemed okay to me. So we all convinced ourselves to have the double dose the next time, and then of course everything came up. It all came out, and you know, again that ceremony is still changing the course of my life today. But again, it’s just such a powerful thing, and I sometimes sit in this chair, Aubrey, and I’m sitting across from massively intelligent people who have never allowed themselves to have the psychedelic experience, maybe because of cultural conditioning or emotional baggage, or no access, or maybe they just didn’t hear Aubrey Marcus in 2010, and it never planted the seed, and they look at me and they say I think that can be done through meditation, that can be done through breathwork, and I look at them and I’m just thinking, nope, nope, there’s no way my life would have been transformed in that time period, and the time was crucial.

34:46 Like my daughter at the time was eight. Now she’s 16. I couldn’t do it. She’s 16. You know, that would have been too late, so I needed to make those changes then, and it would have taken too long with the therapy and this stuff.

34:57 So I think I’m right when I say I disagree with you. I think the psychedelic experience is so important, you know, for some people, absolutely, because to get to the reward for your meditation practice, just like, you know, Bharati, who runs the darkness retreat, said it took her years to actually deepen her meditation practice enough that she could experience without any assistance the kind of altered states that she was, she had the access to now. It took her years.

35:26 So for someone like us, we’re not going to be able to dedicate years to our meditation practice before we even find the reward. We need to taste the reward now, and ideally we have the change that happens now, and that’s what psychedelics can offer. But to expect that somebody’s gonna have a five-year breathwork practice for a reward that they don’t even know that you’re just taking on faith, you know? That it’s really unlikely that that’s going to happen.

35:50 And I do think that you can get there with enough of a dedicated practice and just really making this a primary goal of your life, but it’s not practical. It’s not pragmatic for most of us, and psychedelics can drop you into that state and start to heal things. They start to give you those transcendent experiences, which are probably the most significant source of healing that we have. Like the research being done by Johns Hopkins, you know, they’re studying what the effect of a single dose of psilocybin is on somebody and the effect spans, like you said, a lifetime.

36:23 So what is it that’s healing? It’s not the actual drug itself, because it’s completely out of your system in a day, you know, two days, a week, whatever. So what is it that heals? Well, it’s the transcendent experience, and psychedelic can reliably give you a transcendent experience, which can absolutely alter the course of your life. So can breathwork and meditation, but maybe three years, five years, ten years down the road, if you continue on that path, and good for you if you do that.

36:52 It’s not, you can’t get there that way, but to have that transcendent experience now, like you said, when your daughter’s 8 instead of 16, that is a massive difference. A massive difference, and The benefit is just completely exponential. She’ll feel that for her whole life. You’ve felt that for your whole life. All of those years, I mean, it makes a strong case for the responsible use of psychedelics to those people who are called to it, and I think, you know, as the information gets out there, as legalization comes about for MDMA and psilocybin, I think more and more people are going to be called to this medicine, just because it’s so, it has so much potential.

37:28 Yeah, and it has its own built-in barriers to entry, and thank God that it does. You know, which is why I haven’t run back for two years, because, you know, as I said to Dennis before I went in, I’m feeling some trepidation, and he says, if you don’t, that means you’re not paying attention. So, you know, it definitely has those built-in pieces to make it to where you have to earn it, I guess you would say, or you know, you have to be ready to go to a lot of places.

37:53 And so it’s not something that easily can be abused, whatever that means. And I’m never one to tell someone how to take their psychedelics, but I would agree that, you know, having them on a canal in Amsterdam might not be the best use of that for a specific purpose. So yeah, I agree with you. I think they’re an incredible piece of technology for the human soul and the human race, and I’m just so glad that we’re talking about it. There’s amazing people out there funding studies.

38:20 We got the folks here at Imperial College. We’ve had pretty much all of them on the show. They’re doing great work, and you know, just imagine kids these days, you know, when they were your age, for the vision quest. Now they can go on and, you know, research articles, and maybe it’s legal in certain states, and there’s podcasts, and now they can really get an education. So yeah, it’s powerful.

38:41 I think it’s, when I look at, you know, I look at everything that’s troubling and challenging in our world right now and then I look at the optimistic case, like what gives me real hope, and it’s the psychedelic renaissance, you know. I mean, things will change when people change. There’s not going to be a charismatic leader who’s, you know, drank ayahuasca 50 times and gets elected as president and comes in and is like, you know, what, we’re changing everything.

39:06 Like, that’s unrealistic. It’s not going to happen, because, you know, the leadership lags. What the people demand, that leader will come when the people demand it. So what’s going to change the way that the people feel, how they love one another, how they think about their own life and how they think about the world? You know, can they appreciate their life enough that they want to actually give back to it?

39:25 I think that’s part of the problem that we have, is just this lack of gratitude, you know. Like we just kind of ignore the beauty of life and our fellow humans and everybody else around us, probably because we don’t feel that we have enough worth to give back to them, and it’s one of those, like, laws of reciprocity. So if we actually take in and absorb how much the Earth gives us, well, then we’ll be compelled to give back to the Earth, but we don’t want to do that.

39:51 So we just ignore it, we take it for granted, and then we don’t feel that push of reciprocity. But when you do the plants, you start to feel these things, and then now that they’re coming online, both legally in our country, hopefully pretty soon, and then in the world, and all the places like Soltara, all of these different opportunities coming online, I think it has a chance to dramatically shift large portions of the population and when that happens, I think that population will demand different leadership, and we can enter a new era. So, you know, it gives me a lot of hope.

40:24 You know, if there was this, this is Gandalf coming in, you know, in movie two from The Fellowship of the Ring, when the orcs are just about to take over the stronghold, and it all looks lost, and it’s that dawn of the fifth day, and he comes riding in on a white horse, and his staff is held up in the sky, and the sun hits it. It’s like, oh f***, like this is gonna, it’s gonna work out. To me, I think psychedelics have that potential, and I know that sounds like a crazy story, but I’ve seen what it’s been able to do in my life, and so many other lives.

40:55 I mean, your story is another example of this. It’s made dramatic shifts in individuals. I’ve watched people heal so much trauma from all of these different medicines and then open themselves up to love, and, you know, the desire to help and share and be charitable, and just change the way that they operate within their own lives and operate within society, and so when this gets to scale, I think it has the power to really change everything, and that’s, that gives me a ton of hope and enthusiasm.

41:24 Yeah, and I had a similar conversation with Dennis McKenna after our third ceremony. We were in the cloud forest there in Costa Rica, and we were talking about, like, how do we get, how does, how is, how is there more of this, or how can you get the message out? But one of the things he said is that it is hard to scale this stuff. You know, there’s only 30 people you can get in the Malacca in Soltara, and, you know, and so that’s the only thing that concerns me, uh, because I completely agree with you, but I also worry, like, is there, is there enough access for enough people now?

41:57 Maybe we only need to shift one percent of the population, the Maharishi effect, but that, that concerns me. Does that concern you? When it concerns ayahuasca, there’s a rate-limiting factor, because it’s a plant that’s slow growing. The vines don’t grow, the vines don’t grow fast. It’s not like you put ayahuasca in the ground and it’s like corn.

42:15 You know, you got an eight-foot stalk by springtime, it doesn’t work that way. So, I mean, it can start to be cultivated so that we have more supply, and we could do it in Hawaii. We can do it in lots of different jungle that we’re just burning down, you know, wantonly. Right now, we could actually make a concerted effort and expand it, and then different healers get trained up in the process. But I don’t think that’s what’s going to hit at scale.

42:36 I think that’s going to be something that people who are truly called to it find that experience. But what will get to scale are MDMA and psilocybin, because both of those are synthetic, so just as readily as, you know, someone can push out Advil, they could push out MDMA or psilocybin if they just tune the machines to create those compounds, and those have incredible potential, and the studies are panning out and showing that as well, but they can reliably create these same transcendent experiences within a container that actually facilitates that. So that’s what I think is going to get us to scale.

43:15 Ketamine is another one that’s really interesting, and I think people are not using that in the most optimal way to actually unlock the potential of what that medicine is, but it’s at least coming online for the treatment of depression, and different people are starting to explore it, but these synthetics, I think, will really carry the bulk of the weight. You know, because when there’s that clinic that’s just right down, you know, right down the street from you, and somebody goes who you wouldn’t expect goes, they just, they just take the chance and they go to have that clinic. They have their MDMA psychotherapy, and then they go back to their construction site or they go back to their bank job, and they’re like, yo, right here off Main Street is a clinic.

43:54 You’ll go and you’ll love your life, you’ll love your family, you’ll love the world more than you ever have in your life, and you’re gonna feel better than ever, and they’re gonna be glowing and exuding this energy from every cell. Like, people are gonna be like, oh, I want that. I want some of that. So I just, I know that when this, when this gets across the legalization line, which is close, has got fast-track status from the FDA. It’s almost available for compassionate care right now, based on the post-traumatic stress results, which they’re healing, curing permanently, curing two out of three people with treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress, which is unbelievable, curing them in three sessions.

44:32 In follow-up studies, they stay cured for years, which is unlike anything that’s being offered in the pharmacopoeia of different drugs that are now treating this. Like, we’re not creating cures, we’re creating dependencies, but this is creating cures. So that’s going to be available, and I think it’s going to spread fast, and it’s going to spread at scale. I don’t think there’s going to be enough facilities. I think we’re going to have, for a while, three months, four months, five-month wait lists as soon as this gets out, and people like, whoa, you know, because I’ve, I’ve been fortunate enough, you know, these have been going on underground for a while, these MDMA-assisted psychotherapy sessions, a male facilitator, female facilitator, a blindfold, playlist that specified, you know, a series of different, you know, ways that you facilitate the experience.

45:19 I’ve watched people who had no recollection of sexual abuse when they were younger, or any kind of, uh, just trauma, didn’t remember their childhood at all. I’ve watched them go through the entire healing process in five hours, and it’s changed their life. You know, followed up with them, and it’s, I’ve watched that happen, and I know that’s going to be available, and that’s just one of the medicines you know, that’s not going to give you the visionary kind of transcendent experience, but it’s going to heal everything that’s in your heart, and I think that’s all happening, and it’s going to be, it’s going to be sooner than we think.

45:53 So You know, in a way, right now things are a little bit darkest before the dawn, and, you know, as long as this stays on the course that, on the track that it’s on, I think the dawn is coming. Yeah, I love that observation, and I look forward to, you know, everybody loves going to spas these days where you go and you get the massage and all this other stuff, and you know, why not also have, you know, the psilocybin experience in this room and the MDMA experience in this room? You know, when you go to the mountains in Colorado or you go to Switzerland, or like you said, if it’s down the street, and again, just having the access and the legality, it’s a big difference.

46:29 I remember I had Howard Marks in here, who’s the famous, you know, weed smuggler from Britain, you know, who’s now left us, and he said something really interesting. He said, I have friends that won’t do drugs because they’re illegal, and it was just an interesting observation I hadn’t heard before, and, you know, this is a guy who probably hung out with a lot of people that smoked pot, but he said that was a barrier for a lot of people. Just that thing, but knowing that it’s down the street and it’s okay and it’s legal and it’s acceptable.

46:55 Yeah, I agree. I think it’ll make a big difference in a lot of people’s lives, and yeah, sure, and people still have a ton of faith in the letters MD. You know, and so if you go down and your first consultation is with a doctor, an MD, and they can wear the doctor costume and put on the lab coat and the white outfit to make you feel comfortable and let you know that this has clinical research that shows benefit, and then you get with the facilitators and do it, people are going to have an absolutely different level of comfort, and I think that’s going to change a lot of people’s minds, people who are super resistant to this, because I think most of that is just excuses.

47:31 People are afraid of what they’re going to uncover as soon as they break that thin veneer that’s holding all of this stuff in their psyche in there. You know, as soon as they crack the ice, they’re afraid everything’s going to flood out. I think that’s the real fear behind psychedelics. I actually think that’s why it’s legislated against as well. You know, politicians are scared of this medicine, so they make it illegal so they don’t have to even think about it, and they don’t have to ever do it, and they don’t have to talk to somebody else who’s done it either, and so instead of it being this grand conspiracy, I think it’s just people who are scared to actually peer inside, the same trepidation you felt, but you had enough courage and enough desire to go in there and find it, where other people are like, no, no, let’s just legislate against this, let’s lock this thing down, and that way I never have to worry about it, and I never have to see the truth of what’s inside.

48:17 Yeah, I think you’re right about that. I think also politicians, it’s just unpredictable behavior. You know, when you can create an economic system and a religion and all that, it’s like a predictable society. Unfortunately, it’s predicting us right into a bad narrative. So I agree when they open that up, I think they’ll see that actually this is going to get us to the right place much quicker.

48:40 So good, you made me feel good today and optimistic. I’d love to ask you about this crazy 10-year chapter of your life that’s called Onnit. You know, like I said, with that 2010 broadcast with Rogan, I don’t think Onnit existed yet, and then the next year you started, and then I know you just left the CEO role in March, and so maybe this is a great time to ask you, and it’s probably worth a six-hour show, but when you look back at that 10-year period and again you look really young on that show, you know, what did you learn, what did you create, what were some of those, like, highs and lows for different reasons, and how do you view that period of your life, and how would you describe it to your grandkids one day?

49:26 It was the wildest experience, because I’d had, you know, I was 31 when I started on Onnit, and 30-ish, actually. But it really started going in July of 2011. That’s when we launched Alpha Brain and really took off, but, you know, I’d done a bunch of different things. I had a marketing company. I was in investor relations and working for all different kinds of clients, nutraceutical clients, there was even a pharmaceutical company that was working on ovarian cancer treatments with immune therapy for ovarian cancer out in Alberta, Canada.

49:56 I was working with them. I was, you know, working, selling Fleshlights, that male sex toy, you know, that was one of my clients. I was, I did absolutely everything, and but I wasn’t satisfied or successful in particularly anything, and I tried to launch little small projects on my own. Nothing had really worked out, so I really started to lose faith that I was ever going to get there, and also I had no significant platform at all. I wasn’t putting out the ideas I mean.

50:22 I was 12 years from doing my vision quest, and I was telling people I would meet, who were my friends, but I still wasn’t able to get those ideas out at scale, so I felt frankly depressed, you know, really down, that I was never going to actually be able to build something that was significant that helped people and have a platform that could reach people, and I had so much to share, and I felt, and so much that I’d experienced, the ways that I’d trained, the, you know, the friendships that I’d had. I had a really close friendship with Bode Miller. He was the most decorated skier in men’s history, and, you know, just watching him train and training with him, and the fighters that I knew and everybody I knew, and also my experience with supplements, that it started when my stepmom started giving me supplements when I was a basketball player, and I had so much to offer, from all of everything, intellectually, to every, all the tools, and I just wasn’t able to get it out, and I didn’t think I ever was.

51:17 And so I created a company. I was partying a lot, part as a coping strategy to help with this, and I was partying hard. You know, I didn’t get into the traditional, like, hard drugs like cocaine or any of that, but I was going, I mean, I was going for it. I was drinking hard, and I actually read somewhere about Blackbeard the Pirate, who would drink gunpowder before he’d go into battle and make him feel euphoric, so I did some research, and I would actually drink gunpowder and rum and just be wild, as like a way to feel something, you know, because I just felt kind of purposeless and hopeless, and, you know, I just, I’d make enough money to get by with all of these different clients, and then, you know, I was, I decided to make hangover supplements because I was partying so much, and that was like my primary need, and it wasn’t going well, you know, like at that point.

52:05 Now hangover supplements are kind of like a big thing, but then nobody cared, and my supplements were super premium. They weren’t something you’d find in a gas station, so that was like failing. But I made, I became friends with Joe Rogan during that time, and after that show that you’re talking about, so after that we’re sitting around his house, we’re playing pool, and I’m like, hey man, I’m making these hangover supplements, but like, what supplement would you like the most?

52:32 Is like, I’d like a cognitive enhancer, a nootropic, and I was like, all right, man, I think I can make the best one that’s ever come to market, and he’s like, all right. He just kind of smiles, and then I just got to work and started contacting every doctor, researcher I could find, starting doing the primary research, put together a sample formula that was way too f***ing strong, like way too strong, but it’s perfect for Rogan, because he’s a savage, so I sent it to him, and it just was you could really, really feel it, and what it was really activating, it was elevating the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in your brain through a couple different compounds, and really activating that, and then surrounding it with a bunch of different natural ingredients, and, but it kind of changed the paradigm of what you thought about with supplements, because you know that you can feel drugs, but most of the time supplements you just took on faith.

53:24 Like the brain supplements that are out, you’re like, oh yeah, it’s good for my brain, it’ll help me when I’m older, you know, that’s what you think. But not this one. This one you could really feel, and so that was really that first moment where he’s like, I f***ing love it, let’s do this, and then we basically pivoted the company, and Alpha Brain was the first product, and we came out with that, formed a partnership, and I remember when we launched it, I had, you know, took the last bit of money, so I got fifty thousand dollars from Bode Miller, and another fifty, sixty thousand, probably fifty thousand, from another contact that I had from another client, and so I had a hundred and ten thousand dollars.

54:01 I blew through it, wasted all of it, like, literally all of it, and so I had nothing. The company was completely unfunded. I had no bank account that had any other money, but I had my, the person who was making the supplements, they gave me net 30, which means they would deliver the supplements, and then I had 30 days to pay them, so they delivered their first batch of Alpha Brain on net 30, so I didn’t have to pay for it, and I remember I launched Alpha Brain, sold through in like 12 hours.

54:28 The first batch, and so I had that money, and then I placed another order, and I was like, a real, it was like a real hustle, you know? It was like rolling every different sale into the next batch, into the next bigger batch, and the next bigger batch, but it was, it was unreal. I mean, I remember I just hired as many friends who didn’t have a job as possible to, like, just pack, pack bottles, fill orders, handle customer service, because it was finally like my first real success, but it was almost, you know, too good to believe it was true, so I spent probably as everything expanded, and then we took that same idea with Alpha Brain, created different products, eventually launched kettlebells, and just kind of expanded this idea into total human optimization.

55:10 But it was, so I was so used to not succeeding and so used to failing. I still believed in myself, but I was waiting for something bad to happen the whole time. So in this most exciting period of my life, I spent every day and every night stressed, about worrying about what the next thing was gonna f*** everything up and take me back to zero. And, you know, that went on for years. That went on for years, like five years.

55:36 Yeah, for years, that was the, that was the way I looked at everything. So again, I wouldn’t change anything, except for the fact that I would have enjoyed it. I would, like, really let myself enjoy it, because that’s the trick that the mind does. It’s like, don’t enjoy this too much, because it’ll hurt too bad when it gets taken away. Right.

55:55 So let’s just dampen this pleasure, let’s dampen this excitement, let’s dampen this joy, keep you even keel, you know, so that way when the s*** goes wrong, it won’t hurt so bad. Right, terrible idea, because you don’t deserve it anyways. Right, exactly. Right, exactly, because nobody loves you and you don’t love yourself. So, right, exactly.

56:13 That’s the idea, because, you know, your love is predicated on this external validation instead of actually loving yourself for the essence of who you are, your love for what you do, which you learn from your coach who loves you when you play a good game, and your dad who’s like your coach, you know, and say, at least that was the case with me. I play a great basketball game, he’s excited, we’re talking, we’re joking. I have a shitty game, it’s quiet in the car, it’s not mean, but it’s just quiet, and that quiet silence was devastating, you know?

56:43 And I just, you internalize this idea that your love is predicated on how you perform, and so you’re always in tension, you’re always anxious about your next performance, which equates to your worthiness of love, because you’ve internalized this conditional love, and that was the state I was in. So it was incredible, but also I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I could have, and I think, you know, for anybody out there, just f***ing enjoy it. If you have to take the loss, if you have to take the lumps, take the lumps.

57:14 Like, don’t, don’t prevent yourself from doing it. Don’t dampen your excitement and your joy just in case it might hurt. Don’t not love somebody with your full heart because they might break up with you. You’re actually just taking the worst, the worst-case scenario as a guarantee instead of just allowing it to happen and letting the contrast be the contrast, and that’s like the biggest thing that I could impart on anybody: is to just not, not try to limit the positives of your life because you’re afraid of the negatives.

57:46 Yeah, that’s a really powerful observation, Aubrey. I appreciate you saying that, and I think one of the realizations I had done at Soltara was seeing that own pattern in my own life, you know, where I was kind of over-achieving to get that recognition and love, but what I had done since a kid is I’d shut the loop back, because I wouldn’t allow anyone to love me. So here I was doing all this stuff, right, which was to get the recognition, but then when you love me, I would, I wouldn’t allow it, because I don’t want you to hurt me.

58:14 So it’s this, like, I think they call it a positive feedback loop of just takes you off into madness. And so realizing that helped a little bit, and also the other thing that helped, I’ll be honest, Aubrey, is having, having kids. So I have boys that are three and four years old, and I, I love them so much, it, like, hurts my heart, and, and when I love them so much, the first thing I think, Aubrey, is, this is gonna hurt if they’re ever taken away from me, more so than anything else in my life, and I’ve engineered a lot of my life to where I can’t be hurt.

58:46 And then I had to realize, but it’s just, this is so amazing having them here that I’m gonna, I’m, I’m willing to cross that bridge when it comes to it, because this is amazing, and I don’t have much choice either, as a father. So now I’ve, I know what it’s like, and I haven’t seen enough for three weeks because they’re on holiday, and, and it hurts, but I also know that, you know, it hurts for a reason. So I’m learning, I’m learning. That’s, that’s a beautiful example, you know?

59:11 It puts you in a situation where you, you couldn’t do anything about it anyways. It was gonna hurt no matter what, so you might as well love them full out, you know, and that’s a, and that’s the great, that’s a great lesson. Like, you not loving your kids might dampen the slightest amount of pain, but, it’s not the way to live. The way to live is to love them absolutely as fully as possible, and then take whatever delta, whatever change, you know, that may happen, and take that if it ever does happen.

59:41 But, uh, it’s just the, it’s the courageous, and it’s the right way to live. Live our life is to just understand that s*** may happen, and that’s okay, and that you’ll be all right, you know? You’ll figure it out one way or another, and it may be devastating, but what’s even more devastating is to be like me when I took my blindfold off and recognized how many opportunities I had to love my life and love the people in it so much more than I ever did, and I didn’t do it.

1:00:07 We don’t want to be that on our deathbed, you know? We don’t want to have that revelation when we’re 60 and 70 and look back and be like, wow, I never loved my own life. I never loved the people in it, and I never loved this earth, you know, because I was afraid of having to let it all go. And, you know, that’s not who we want to be. We want to be that warrior poet that’s just out there savoring life so much that, you know, we have no regrets.

1:00:33 You know, hoka hey, today is a good day to die. How do you get to that mentality? You get to that mentality by living so fully and loving so much that if it’s your day, okay, let’s go. And there’s so many people probably listening to us right now that are like, yeah, that’s me, that’s me, Aubrey. I have all this great stuff, which, if anyone’s actually listening to us right now or watching us, almost by definition you have great stuff.

1:00:57 You know, you’re alive, your eyes are working, you have an internet connection. It’s like, I bet your life is pretty, pretty damn good if you look at it the right way, and yet some people still have a hard time appreciating things, like what I said to the shaman in Costa Rica before I had the first ceremony. As I said, I feel like I’m unappreciative. That’s what I said. So, like, I knew I was where you’re at, and but knowing it isn’t enough.

1:01:21 Sometimes you have to be able to do something, to where, like you said, you can be that guy that can live it all, and I guess a psychedelic can help, or gratitude can help, or a practice can help, or maybe just knowing will help you get there. All of it. I mean, awareness is the first step. Like, awareness is always the first domino, and that’s what you had when you talked to the shaman. I feel like I’m not appreciating things.

1:01:41 That’s awareness, so you’re aware of the situation, and that’s, if people can leave this today with that little bit of awareness of the areas of their life they’re not appreciating, that’s a huge win, and then you got to figure out, okay, what am I going to do to start appreciating that? And yeah, absolutely, the medicines can help. You know, I mean, I look back on some of the greatest experiences of my life, and two out of the five I’d have to say were me skiing on a small dose of mushrooms, because I’m out in the mountains, I’m with my friends, it’s like beautiful, the snow’s falling, I’m shredding through different, you know, terrains and exploring and laughing, and it was like just such utter, utter joy, you know, and those experiences are absolutely recalibrating, because then you realize how special our life is.

1:02:30 And other times in the hilarity of laughing in the ski lifts, this combination where we drift off into these moments of beauty as we would crest over these snow-capped peaks and see the sun, like, tickling through the clouds, and then we’d make a joke and just start hilariously laughing, and it was just the life was so full in these moments. And interestingly, I, I did an interview with you know, a top, uh, top NFL quarterback guy, won the Super Bowl, Pro Bowler, and I was talking to him, and this is when we’re off air, and he’s like, you know, I won that Super Bowl, right? And I was like, yeah, I know, and everybody knows.

1:03:09 And he’s like, you want me to tell you something better? It’s like doing mushrooms on the beach with my friends. I was like, whoa, man, like that’s a big endorsement. But it’s just, even the greatest thing that we could all imagine as a warm-blooded man is like winning the Super Bowl. I mean, that’s, that’s got to be up there.

1:03:26 Like, he’s saying just being on a beach with his friends, with the help of that medicine, gave him that experience. Now, that’s not going to say that’s going to happen for everybody, and that you should go take mushrooms and go skiing like me, or go to the beach and do mushrooms like, you know, like the guy I’m talking about, almost said his name, but you know, really it can open up the possibility for how much the simplest things and the small things can be enjoyable in life, and I think that’s important for us to recognize that it doesn’t have to be pinned to some great external thing that happens, because a lot of times these external things that happen, there’s so much build up, and when they happen there’s that moment, but then there’s also the letdown that comes at the end of it, because you’ve been working towards it, it’s singularly focused on it, and then there’s this lull that comes.

1:04:12 Really, so much of what’s available to us just happens in the quiet, in between moments. You know, those little times where you can laugh with your partner or play with your kids or hang out with your buddies and really be there presently, or be out in nature, go skiing or surfing or doing any of these different things. Like, that’s where the real magic lies. It lies in the gaps, you know, in the in-betweens, and there’s so much, so much available there, so finding a way to get to that is absolutely crucial, whatever it is, like you said, whether it’s a gratitude practice or self-love practice or you know, just the mentality of it, or psychedelics, one way or another, we got to get to that state where we just really love our lives, love each other, and enjoy this thing, you know, because otherwise, if we don’t enjoy this world, we might as well let it f***ing burn.

1:05:02 You know, so many people are living in a hell like this beautiful world. It’s hell for them. They’re suffering no matter where they go. They’ve got to bring themselves with them, and if you’re that person who cares, if you’re plundering the earth and burning it, who cares, who cares if the oceans are getting wrecked, or it doesn’t matter, it’s hell anyways, like, let it burn. But when you love it, when you really love it, then it’s a different thing, and you’re like, no, no, like, we got to protect this thing.

1:05:33 This is f***ing amazing, not just for me but for everybody. It’s too good. We cannot let this thing go, and I think that’s the biggest thing that’ll shift and, you know, I’ve certainly felt that myself, and that’s that, that, that feeling, but it all comes with us, so it is crucially important that we do enjoy ourselves. We got to, otherwise, like, what’s our motivation? What’s our motivation to do anything?

1:05:55 If we don’t love it, there’s none. Yeah, so true. You know, and like you said, our leaders are a lagging indicator on how we feel about ourselves, so if we concentrate on that, you know, watch how our reality changes in tune It’s funny how you mentioned the beach with mushrooms. So I had Dan Bilzerian on the show, uh, you know, quite controversially, and that’s the one thing he said was one of his greatest moments was having mushrooms on the beach with his friends.

1:06:21 That was one of his great moments, you know, and so again, like, take Dan, and you might assume it was no, the time where the 25 girls were in the pool at his mansion, or, you know, the 25 girls in his plane or whatever, or on his boat, but that was the thing, you know, a couple friends, the mushrooms, and maybe the mushrooms help you get out of your head for that moment and maybe appreciate everything around you. You’re connected with nature, and yeah, I can, I feel like I could be there on the slopes right now and, and be appreciative of that. Um, yeah, that’s really good advice.

1:06:53 Just to, you know, continue our finish off on the Onnit journey. You know, one thing that really always amazed me about Onnit was you know, you, you, it wasn’t a one-hit wonder, you know? It wasn’t just the Alpha Brain story. When you tell that, a lot of people are always like, wow, I never would have thought that. You, it was one product in the beginning, because then it was Shroom Tech, and your branding was off the chart, Aubrey, and like everything you did was just premium, and it just, it almost looked like you could see the future in a weird way.

1:07:23 And I know you have a great team and all of that, but still it seemed like you were three steps ahead, and you were almost like Steve Jobs, like creating the product that people didn’t know they wanted. You know, and just wondering, like, looking back at that, like, how was that, was that all your marketing experience, you know? And then just highs and lows on that journey, and then you know, and then, you know, this year walking away from it? Yeah, honestly, I was making products for myself.

1:07:51 That was my secret, you know. I, I really am well-rounded in all of the passions that I have. Everything that I love to do, I love all of the physical activities, I love mental activities, I love any variety of training and so many different sports. I was great at virtually nothing, but good enough at about everything that I was experiencing, so many different facets, so there were so many different desires that I had for different products in different ways.

1:08:18 So my advantage was that I was creating products for myself, and because I was so involved in so many different activities, there was a ton of other people who were, like, who were like me in some way, and so literally everything I created was something that I loved. I wasn’t trying to assess a market and then create a widget to fit the need in that market. It wasn’t my business hat that I was doing. I was saying, what is the raddest thing that I could make that I would use and love?

1:08:46 And that was my guiding star, and I just started knocking those down in priority of what I wanted the most. So that, and that’s honestly continued, you know? It’s like, what do I want the most? Well, well, I would like some high-protein snacks. That’s one of our latest products, right?

1:09:03 Because we’ve knocked down so many other categories, where on it is just an absolute part of my everyday life. Like, people have asked, like, what are you going to do, you know, what’s your relationship with Onnit going to be like? And yes, my management of Onnit is going to be different now that I’m not the CEO, but I’m still taking every product, like, every day, still training with the tools like me, and Onnit are inexorable, because I’ve built it to serve my needs, and you know, fortunately so many other millions of people out there, their needs as well, because we’re all a lot more similar than we are different, ultimately, and that was really the secret of it.

1:09:41 Um, but yeah, of course, a lot of hard lessons, you know, like if I had to sum up, you know, some of the big moments, you know, one moment we had early on we had a security hack. This was when a lot of those different security hacks were coming, and we discovered it internally, and, you know, there’s big stories of Target trying to cover it up, I think, you know, different people who it got exposed, and then they had to apologize, and so there was, this was all on the zeitgeist, but we found it really early. We just saw them as soon as they got in.

1:10:12 Didn’t even know if they got to any data, but I made the choice then, like, the way what Onnit stood for was radical vulnerability, authenticity, truth, you know? We would just share the reality of what it was, because that’s who I was as a human being, and that’s what Joe is as well, you know? It’s like, we’re going to express the truth, so I made the choice to just go out and tell every one of our customers, like, hey, this is what happened, you know?

1:10:36 We don’t think anything happened, but that was kind of a really radical move at the time. I think that’s something that’s in the zeitgeist now, and a lot more companies would do it, but stepping out like that, I think it really engendered a lot of trust. So what was this thing that was absolutely seemingly catastrophic? Oh, our customers are never going to trust us, this is going to be it, this is going to be that thing that I was afraid of happening. It finally happened, and I, I wasn’t you know, I wasn’t watching the defense as much as the offense, and this is my fault, and all of this, but I just went out with a heartfelt, sincere apology and what we were going to do to correct it, and the response was overwhelmingly positive.

1:11:13 We actually got more sales that day than the day before. So it was, that was like a big moment to just say, look, just trust authentically, what’s going to happen. We made a, I made a big gamble with Alpha Brain when I talked to the Boston Center for Memory, which is one of the top institutes that study different pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals for different brain functions. I talked to them about doing a clinical trial on Alpha Brain, and they told me straight up, they’re like, listen, we’ve done 11 studies on supplements, all 11 showed no results, and we published all 11 of those studies, so we’ll study Alpha Brain, but just so you know, if it turns out negative, we’re going to publish it, and that would have been absolutely devastating, right?

1:11:56 Because we have this product that we really feel is working, and all the Anecdotes are saying it’s working, but if we have a clinical trial and it shows nothing, it shows no efficacy. Oh, that’s going to be tough, but I was like, I really believed in what we had, even though the other supplements hadn’t shown any efficacy, and I just pushed all the chips in. You know, that was a, that was a crazy moment. I remember I was, I knew the results were about to come out and had been unblinded, and I was getting a massage trying to calm my nerves, and I saw our tech calling my phone, and I just, like, popped up out of the table and I just, from the moment that I heard him say my name, I could just hear it in his voice, like I knew it was positive, and I just started, like, again, crying, like just, like the tears of, like, joy that that had actually panned out as we believed it did.

1:12:45 That was a huge moment for us. Some of the lessons I learned, you know, we hired some at different points, really skilled people, but they were not part of the audit ethos. They could be manipulative, and they could be, you know, self-serving or disparaging to their subordinates and, but they had such a, they had, so, so many skills that I felt like we needed, and we weren’t able to reach and, like, find the best of the best yet, that I would allow them to continue in the company, and they would, that cancer would just spread, and it would get wider and wider until finally I had to cut it out and get it, get rid of it.

1:13:20 But after every one of those experiences I always thought, you know, what, like, I should have let that person go sooner. Like, I knew it, and I was just too scared because of the leverage they had and the skill set they had, to let them go. And there’s a saying, you know, that I kind of started reminding myself: it’s better to have a hole than an a**hole, like, better to have a part of your company that isn’t filled than it being filled with somebody who’s not of the right heart and character.

1:13:49 So, you know, paid the price for some of those mistakes. But, you know, everything else has been really, a blessed, blessed journey. We had some, we had our periods of financial challenges, where we distributed too much money, and then things didn’t turn out the way they did, and then we, we called it Cashpocalypse. Our CFO just actually stood up and just walked out of the office and never came back, and we’re like, where’d you go, bro? And he’s like, you guys are done.

1:14:15 We’re like, no, we’re not, we’re going to be fine. Like, no, he was out. We’ve had we’ve had all of those kind of crazy moments that I think a lot of companies coming up have, but for the most part, I can look back with just a smile and a laugh at all this, because, you know, despite my internal stress, it’s really been a super blessed, blessed journey, and we’ve just helped so many people, and I’ve got to meet so many amazing people, you know, all the fighters that I’ve got to interact with, all the athletes, all the top pros, people I’ve been able to train with at the Honor gym out in Austin.

1:14:46 It’s, I mean, it’s been an absolute dream. If I gave a snapshot of my life to the younger Aubrey, you’d be like, damn, bro, that is the dream. That is the f***ing dream, and I’m like, yeah, it really is. Yeah, it is, like a movie, you know? And, you know, I’m so blessed from this podcast, for all the crazy people I meet.

1:15:05 You know, you kind of did it through a company, you know, and a podcast too, but it’s just, it’s just, it’s cool to watch, and like you said, the 30-year-old wouldn’t have believed it. It looks crazy, right? So you should be super proud of that, of what you accomplished, for sure, man. It’s really, really impressive to watch, and thank you. I know it had ups and downs, and people don’t see behind the scenes and all the hard work and stress.

1:15:30 And I mean, geez, 180 people, I mean, you know, hundreds, a lot. I mean, 50 is a lot, you know, to just get your head around and manage, and it’s tricky, I know for sure. Why leave now, and what’s next for the next five years, or is it just a day at a time for you? Really, I felt like I’d given my best stuff to Onnit, and there was a team that was more capable of running it at this point, you know, than me. And we had, I’m fortunate enough, our CEO is someone I’ve worked with at Onnit for six years, so I didn’t have to go out and hire somebody else.

1:16:01 He came in in 2014, and he’s just a phenomenal human, who’s heart first, but I’ve never met anybody who’s more diligent and works harder, and he used to run, like, the top hotel in Wisconsin, and so he’s used to that kind of customer service, kind of first idea of, like, really serving people, and really solving any of the problems with a lot of heart and that’s just the way he does it, and so he was the clear choice to replace me, because, you know, not only does he have the skills running all of these different aspects of a hotel business, and then he’s, we can hire the people with the supplement experience, and all of different regulatory experience. We have a great team for that, and he can hire all the other people, but he leads with his heart, and so knowing that I had him, and knowing that he was going to put in that 12 to 14 hours a day necessary as a CEO, and I wasn’t, I’m doing my podcast, I’m doing, you know, I have this amazing mastermind, which has been one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done.

1:16:57 I have the books that I’m writing, and I really was called more to that, and of course I love the product development and I love the relationships, and I’m going to continue doing that, but just handing the keys officially over to him was you know, one of the best decisions, and the company’s been thriving since, and I think it’s nice to have a CEO who’s, who is that guy that’s going to show up earlier than everybody and leave later. Now, of course, with COVID, we’re at limited staff in the office anyways, but he’s still there. Like, I know when I go there, into my office, podcast, I go to work out, I can pop in and I’m going to see him, because he’s just always on as always, on the game, and that’s what a real, that’s what this company deserves, and I wasn’t able to offer that to them, so it was better for me to step out.

1:17:39 And yeah, and as I said, you know, writing, podcasting, and then this mastermind, which started as a mastermind but now I call it the Fellowship, has been something that’s really kind of changed my ideas about what another thing that I want to offer. So I think one of the things we’re all missing is a sense of community, in a sense, a tribe. You know, we all used to be in bands of under 150 people. They call that the Dunbar number. It’s about the maximum amount of people we can truly give a f*** about.

1:18:07 And that’s what tribes organized around is this 150 people or less, and so that’s where we put the cap on the Fellowship, and we have an application process, and we kind of view people and see, you know, if they’re ready to join, you know, just a true Fellowship where you’re able to sacrifice some of your own personal, you know, grievances and just open up and hold a container of just love and support for everybody and just allow that reciprocity to flow. We don’t do psychedelics together, but we’ll do as much as we can on the transformational side. So, like, heavy, heavy Stan Grof-esque shamanic breathing.

1:18:42 You know, we’ll do the ecstatic dance workouts, uh, ecstatic dance routines. We’ll do the, uh, we’ll do the temescal, like sweat lodges, and all of the different transformational practices are really bonding this group together, and it’s just been, it’s just been rad. We call it the Fit for Service Fellowship, because it’s training us to all become more fit for service, but it feels like a little mini Camelot, you know, where we’re bringing in outside coaches and musicians, but we have our crew, and then the whole, everybody’s just sitting at this giant round table, and it’s just this massive group of people that are just down, just absolutely there for each other, and I think this is just one group, but I think it’s a model.

1:19:25 It’s like the blueprint, you know? It’s like the beta test for one thing that I think is hugely missing in our society, which is that feeling that you have a crew that has gone through some s*** with you, you know, and that’s one of the reasons that plant medicine ceremonies are so great. You get so close to people because you’ve puked in buckets with each other and gone through and cried in front of each other, and gone through all of these processes. But to really feel like you have a tribe, you know, I think is something that we’ll, we’ll all need to kind of reform and rearrange for the human being to actually feel like it has a sense of belonging and knows and is grounded into this kind of wild modern world because otherwise we’ll attach to all of the dark impulses of tribalism, which is like, these are my people and I hate everybody else.

1:20:11 You know, it’s like, my people versus your people, and that’s getting smaller and smaller, and all the identity politics and everything else that’s coming along with that. It’s all, I think, in my opinion, caused from the absence of a true tribe where you have your people that you’ve gone through all of these different transformations with, and it’s not that you hate everybody else besides your people, but it’s just that you know that you belong to something, that you have people who see you and can hold up that mirror. You know, if you’re being crazy, they can be like, hey man, you all right?

1:20:40 Like, what’s going on? You seem really angry, you know? Like, you have somebody who will check you because everybody’s on even footing. And so that’s another thing that, you know, along with psychedelic medicine, which actually facilitates that, I really want to encourage people to find that, find that crew, find that clan. You can go, like, I took a trip out to see Wim Hof out in Poland with a group of people, and we were doing cold plunges and climbing mountains with our shirts off and doing the breathing work, and after that, I mean, I’m as close with those guys as anybody just from, like, five days of consistent, like, rites of passage.

1:21:17 Bonds are grouped together, like we know we have each other. Everybody in that group at a certain point broke down and cried about something that came up in the breath work or some challenge they had. You know, one of the guys who’s jumping into a frozen waterfall couldn’t even swim, so we had to be there. We’re like, we got you, like, jump in this thing, you won’t drown, like, we’re there, you know? Like all of these experiences that just change somebody’s life.

1:21:39 And, you know, I think that’s the other missing piece, like when we really feel like we belong to a tribe and we have the tools to expand our hearts and our minds to what’s possible. We’re looking at a whole different f***ing world. Yeah, it’s powerful what you said there, because I guess we’re wired to find a tribe no matter what, so if you can’t set up a healthy, functional one, you’re gonna grab on to anything that looks like a tribe, right, which could be a sports team or religion or, you know, a subsection of a gender or a Twitter handle or a political movement.

1:22:16 You know, and these probably aren’t going to be designed maybe as well as, like you said, something that is intentional with, like, a rule set, and we’re here to, to be here for each other, and we don’t do this, we don’t do that. So I never actually thought about that that way. And I knew when you talked to guys like in the SEALs, the Jocko’s of the world, they have that brotherhood, and they always seem like they have a kind of some type of grounding that maybe a lot of us just don’t have, because they had that.

1:22:46 I was in a fraternity in college, one of the greatest times of my life, you know? I would never give it away for anything, and if I told you what we did, first of all, I’d get cancelled, and second of all, you’d say, it sounds stupid, but it was absolutely amazing. I mean, it was 50 guys, at max age 22, average age 20, running our own house, cooking for ourselves, if you call it cooking, and it was this thing, and it was just amazing to be a part of that.

1:23:14 And I missed that, you know, and it’s, it’s, it’s, we don’t know how to do that really as adults, because there’s not many good mechanisms out there to do that these days, right? That’s, yeah, that’s what’s missing. You know, it, this is like the, it’s a slightly more grown-up version of a fraternity, and it’s not that, you know, with the Fit for Service crew, like, we don’t go out and get drunk. Like, one of the summits that we hold, we hold these five-day summits where we go through all these experiences.

1:23:36 It’s not like we won’t all go out on the town and drink, you know, mezcal in Tulum and have some fun, you know? So that’s a part of it, which is what a fraternity would do. I mean, fraternities were younger and dumber, like you said, so we’re a little bit more extreme with that kind of activity, but it’s also adding in the other parts. It’s adding in those, like, quiet, vulnerable parts where the stuff is coming up from deep inside, which most fraternities, you know, we don’t do.

1:24:00 It’s, most, I was in a fraternity too, just focused on fun and parties and the next experience that you have, maybe some sports which bond you. So it is that kind of, it is a similar thing, but it doesn’t go quite to the extent that it could when you have some intentionality and you add those rites of passage. So it’s like, where are the modern fraternities? Where are those things that we can really feel like we have people that we can go out and have fun with?

1:24:23 Like, we go into any city. That was another great thing about the fraternity: you know, you could go to another college, give, you know, the fraternity brothers there the handshake, and you had a place to party in any city, you know? And so, like, imagining, like, just kind of this code of different people who are interested in doing that personal deep work and that have, like, a code of ethics and an ethos, an idea, and knowing that they’re going to be in all of these different cities, so even if you’re traveling, going to a new city, which I think people should do more often than not, go to a new city by yourself, but if you’re there, and you’re like, huh, I wonder who’s part of this same kind of ethos as tribe, let me just put up a pin on the app or whatever technology you can use, and then you get some people and you’re like, oh yeah, these people are same, they’ve all, you know, experienced these deep transformational things, they’ve all looked at their shadow, you know, they’ve done some of the work, and then you have this kind of brotherhood that exists, or sisterhood.

1:25:19 And I really like, I can see that, you know, I can see that potentially happening, and just with a little structure and organization. So yes, I’m going to be writing, I’m going to be podcasting, but if I’m thinking about what I’m most excited about, it’s about creating, like, a social movement based around tribe and based around transformational experiences, based around shared rites of passage, and that gets me, really, that gets me really fired up, because I just know how valuable that is in my life and everybody that I’ve experienced, and how it’s definitely possible to cultivate that, and just take some intentionality and a little bit of structure, and then I believe it’s going to really catch on. Yeah, well, your passion just jumped off the screen there, so you definitely are on the right path for sure.

1:26:04 Yeah, man, I mean, I felt that vibe for sure. I got to ask you about relationships, because you were probably one of the most vocal guys about his polyamorous journey, I guess, I call that over the last, I don’t know, eight years, and now you’ve recently gotten married, and I think you’re going on a monogamous journey, and maybe you can talk about that. Like I said, I think you’re one of the more public guys that talked about this stuff in a space where many guys are curious.

1:26:36 A lot of guys well don’t know much about it, and you were always really honest, and describing it sometimes is almost like an ego-destroying experience, so maybe paint the picture and walk us through it. Almost, I know it could be six hours on this, but tell me about that adventure. Well, yeah, that was, I mean, it’s a huge part of my life. Another one of the great, greatest learning tools that I’ve ever experienced, because, man, I, I vastly overlooked how challenging it would be.

1:27:08 So basically, here’s the idea: that you have to understand that I was one of those people who really validated himself a lot based on the partner that I had, based on my own sexual prowess, based on my own attractiveness, based on how many people love me. So when you’re in that kind of framework, and this is a, this is a normal thing, you know, we are so many people are like this. So when you’re in that framework, also, I’d like different experiences, and I love, I love people.

1:27:34 I just love people, and I find beautiful things about different people, so I was in a lot of relationships, but ultimately I would always get kind of restless in those relationships, one, because I would exhaust all of the validation that I could get from my current partner, and I would need new validation. So I was kind of a serial monogamist. I had some longer relationships, but still that kind of pressure was, was pushing in, so with my partner Whitney, you know, again, 18 months was about that time where, like, the pressure would start to mount, and I’d be like, I really want to go out and do something, and I wasn’t someone who would cheat just because of the pure pressure and anxiety of it.

1:28:12 It just didn’t sit right with me, and it was not something that I was willing to do. And you know, that’s a solution for a lot of different people. They’re just unfaithful, and so they get that validation and kind of cheat the system and then just bear the cost of that infidelity. It wasn’t a cost that I was willing to bear. So I read Chris Ryan’s book, Sex at Dawn, and it talked about how within the tribes there was a lot of sexual fluidity, that people were allowed to sleep with each other.

1:28:35 The Eskimos, for example, like, one of the reasons we call each other Eskimo brothers was because the chief would allow guests of honor to sleep with his wife when they would come in. So there’s different rules, you know, the different tribes in Africa where there were nomadic tribes and people would go out, the men would go out, and they would leave one man behind, and the man would service all of the women sexually in the whole tribe, and that would rotate, you know? So there’s different ideas and frameworks around sexuality.

1:29:04 Dr Wednesday Martin wrote another great book called Untrue which is good to, like, explore the anthropological and scientific reasons behind, you know, this kind of polyamorous look. So I had that, and I started to understand that, and then I started to understand my philosophy about love is that love and pleasure shouldn’t be something that is possessed. That this is something that nobody should own. Nobody should own love. Love is like the sun.

1:29:29 It just shines, you know, and sexuality shouldn’t be controlled and owned. So I had these concepts, so I talked to my partner Whitney, and I was like, look, I think we should go polyamorous. I think we should go open relationship. She’s like, f*** that, like, I’m out. And I was like, all right, you’re like, I gotta I gotta do it.

1:29:48 So I was single for a little while, and then we started talking, and she’s like, all right, like, I’m willing to give it a go. Like, I don’t, I think I’m gonna hate it, but I’m willing to give it a go. So she agreed to give it a go, and then I got a partner first in that, and I started seeing that partner, and it was really hard for her, like, really hard, and I had no compassion. I was like, we agreed to this, like, what’s wrong with you? Like, why are you crying?

1:30:14 Like, what’s going on? And then, so that carried on for a little while, and then she got a partner, and when she got a partner, and I was actually away on, like, a spiritual diet, actually, at the time, so I found out. It was a crazy story, actually, which is kind of amusing. So I’m leaving on this isolation diet where I’m going to have no phone contact, I’m not going to talk to her, and she was starting to date this guy, and he was supposed to be leaving the same day as me, and they hadn’t slept together.

1:30:40 Well, I’m going to catch my flight, and on another flight they start announcing his name, and they’re like, I’m not gonna use his real name, like, Travis, Travis, so-and-so, you’re about to miss your flight, blah blah, and I was like, that f***er stayed. He’s gonna sleep with my girl. I know it, but I had no way. I had no way to check, because we were out of contact at that point. So then I arrive.

1:31:02 I go through, I’m thinking about it the whole time on this diet. I’m like, I know they did. I bet they did it, and then I finally, I get the call. I was like, hey, the craziest thing, I heard, he didn’t catch his flight. Did you guys end up sleeping together?

1:31:12 Said, yep. At that point I was like, okay, cool. I’ll call you back, and I felt a feeling that I’d never felt before, like I didn’t know if I wanted to vomit, cry, or start punching the wall. It was like this overwhelming, like, guttural response that I had, and I spent that whole day just trying to reconcile it, and it was brutal. I mean, I would think about every, every new position.

1:31:36 I would think about them sleeping together, like, oh my god, he’s hitting her, he’s hitting it from behind, oh my god, doggy style, like, and I would want to vomit again. I would think about every sexual act, and it would be this visceral response, and I started to get it. I was like, oh, I get why you were having a hard time with this, but of course I was committed, you know? I was like, I gotta work through this. Like, this is my own s*** that I gotta deal with, and so that started the journey.

1:32:02 Five years. The challenges continued, because what was the first difficult thing was the sexuality. The most difficult thing is when it started to involve love, you know, and she felt, my partner ended up falling in love with somebody at Burning Man, and I ended up, you know, having to deal with that, and I had, I’d had, you know, significant love for somebody else as well, which was incredibly tumultuous. So not only sharing sexuality, but sharing love, which then, you know, reduces the amount of validation you have, and you feel like you’re unworthy.

1:32:33 You know, I remember comparing myself to all her partners. She would be with a great athlete, and I would start training in his sport, and then I’d realize he should be with a fighter, and I’d start hitting the bag, and I’d be like, what are you doing? You’re never going to be as good as him at that. Just be you. So you learn to start to appreciate yourself for the essence of who you are, and not try to compare and compete with other people.

1:32:52 But it’s a brutal, brutal path, and it never really got easy. You get better at it, and you start to learn, and you start to learn to appreciate who you are and start to appreciate the experiences that you have with people. And it’s also beautiful too, because you have the freedom to explore and meet people. I actually met my wife when I was in that polyamorous experience, and we didn’t have an intimate relationship, but we were at Burning Man again, the first time, Burning Man, not the time she, my partner, fell in love, but we got to flirt and hang out, and there was just the freedom to explore different things, and I’m just so grateful that Whitney was able, was willing to take that journey with me and explore all of these different possibilities.

1:33:32 But after doing that for six years, it never really got to the point where we were deepening the relationship when things would get kind of tumultuous. We’d always have another outlet. Like, all right, cool, like, we’ll cool this one off, I’ll go spend time with my other girl, you go spend time with your boy, and we’ll kind of, we’ll come back together if we want to, later. So there was always, like, an escape valve, you know? So, like you said, like the beauty of how much you love your kids is you couldn’t escape it.

1:33:58 You know, you were like, you were in there, and you had to do the work to really, to really love them. Well, this always gave another outlet, so I started to feel like, you know, what, like, I want to try a different way. And then, you know, after really getting the opportunity to connect with who’s now my wife in a more intimate way, I was like, aha, like, this is the path forward, and I really started to envision what union would look like, where instead of looking for things externally, the practice was just to deepen the relationship, deep and deep, deepen it, deep in it, explore more, you know, start, you know, looking at the work that Mantak Chia is doing, like you mentioned, and say, like, all right, what are the four gates?

1:34:39 I only know, like, the basics, like well, how can we take this deeper, and how can we explore further, and go, go, like, go to the depths of what relationship is capable of, in a container where we feel safe and we just feel like we’re unconditionally loved, and that’s been an incredibly beautiful and healing journey, to just be in that kind of partnership where I know that we’re just there for each other. And this is, this is not one of these things like we’re going to get married and try it out, and if it doesn’t work, like, I’m all in, like, burn the boats, all in. We’re riding.

1:35:10 I’m riding this. We’re going to ride or die together, you know, in this partnership. And there’s a, a beautiful freedom that what may seem like a restriction is not a restriction. It’s actually the freedom of having no other options, that no matter what happens, no matter if we get in a big disagreement, an argument, like we’re going to figure it out. Like, this is, this is my this is my partner, this is my person, and no matter what, you know, we’re coming back together.

1:35:36 And so it’s, you know, it’s, I think that whole journey is like the classic hero’s journey. You know, the classic hero’s journey. You learn things along the way, and then you come back home to where you originally were, but when you’re home, you’re a completely different person with a completely different understanding, and I’ve never felt more love and more freedom than I do now with Vilana. It’s just been a beautiful f***ing journey that I wouldn’t trade for anything, all the difficulties that I’ve had, you know?

1:36:03 I mean, every, every single thing that you can imagine having to deal with, from a super aggressive lover to your partner who you love so much falling in love with somebody, I had to deal with all of it, like every different aspect, and it was brutal and beautiful, and now I get to really appreciate, you know, this kind of traditional monogamous concept of just you with a partner, and just deepening that relationship every day. Can you only appreciate and do this monogamy now because you went through all the polyamorous roller coaster, or do you think, you know, 39-year-old Marcus would have got there anyways, or Aubrey would have got there anyways? No f***ing chance, really.

1:36:45 Okay, no chance. I never would have been able to appreciate this without that experience. There’s no way, because I wouldn’t have been able to know myself. I wouldn’t have been able to understand these kind of forces that are acting on me, you know, my compulsions and desires to get validation from somebody else, to be loved, you know, because I didn’t love myself enough, and that was ultimately the thing, the only remedy that’s available in polyamory, which is the biggest gift.

1:37:12 The only remedy is self-love. The only remedy, the only thing that will get you out of anything, is self-love. You can scramble to other different partners, you can try and get it from other sources, but it won’t work. The only thing that’ll actually cure the pain is loving yourself, so it forces you over and over, like a stern master, like the Kill Bill guru, you know, with the stick and the beard, just whipping you every time you don’t love yourself enough, and that’s what the polyamory experience was.

1:37:40 So I think it’s, for me, was the absolute necessary and and best way that I could have learned to love myself and actually be able to show up for a partner like I’m able to show up for Vilana. Can polyamory work in the long term for anybody? You know, I really think that I was very well equipped, out of, out of the general population. I felt like I’m I’m very well equipped. I have all the tools.

1:38:07 I have the psychedelic medicines, I have the transformational practices, I have access to the best of the best. I couldn’t make it work, so it gives me some doubt, and I’m sure there’s people who are better than me, and they can, they can certainly do it, but I wasn’t able to muster enough to make it really work. With everything I put my whole heart into it, I really went for it, I couldn’t make it work. So it, it’s incredibly challenging. I think it can.

1:38:30 I think it can work, but it’s going to require two people who are at a level of mastery that’s pretty exceptional, and that will exist, and I think that’ll actually exist more and more as more people kind of do the work and kind of open themselves up to the truth and love themselves deeper. I think it’s going to become more available and more pragmatic as time evolves and as people evolve, but I think right now it’s really difficult. I also think there’s some of the tribal dynamics that are hard.

1:38:59 Like, if you look anthropologically at all these other different societies that are doing this, they have, again, those small tribes that they’ve gone through rituals with. So what I experienced as well, when my partner was sleeping with somebody who I was friends with, who I loved, it was way easier. But when he was that random f***ing guy that I didn’t know, that was just getting drunk and going out, and they were just having rowdy sex, like, that was brutal.

1:39:26 And what I liken it to is this idea, like, let’s say you had a new Lamborghini and you loved it. You know, if your good homie was like, hey man, toss me the keys, I want to take this for a spin, you’d be like, all right, just, you know, take care of it, but you would trust that they’re not going to grind the gears, they’re not going to, like, smash the curbs on purpose or smoke cigarettes in your car, you know? You’re like, all right, it’s cool. So they’d come back, and they, you know, borrow your car for a day, and they’d give it back, and you’d be like, all right, I can deal with that.

1:39:54 It’s a little stressful, but I can deal with it. But if it’s some random person, you’re just like, throwing your keys into a mosh pit, and, like, whoever gets the keys takes my car, you know? Like, it’s gonna be incredibly hard, because you just won’t trust them, and you won’t have the compersion, you know, we have, which is a word I should explain. So compassion is this idea of being with someone in their suffering, so compassion literally means “with suffering.”

1:40:18 Passion is actually the etymology of it. It’s a mean suffering, so you’re with someone and they’re suffering in their hardship, but compersion is to be with somebody in their pleasure. And it’s something we don’t even really have a word for, that’s, that’s that common, but it’s much easier to have compersion for both your partner and the other person when you love them both, and I think that’s what a tribe created. It created the ability to have compersion, to actually love the fact that somebody else was having a good time, and love the fact that your partner was having a good time because you knew him.

1:40:48 So I think another thing that’s going to make this possible is when you have more of a tribal construct, when you have, like, a group of people, and, and the partnerships, you know, are a lot, a lot more fluid and easier to flow within that group of people that you love, rather than just this random wide world that we have now, where most likely the partners are going to be people you absolutely don’t know, and I think that’s a very difficult thing for the human psyche to be able to do now. It is possible that you can universally see everybody in the world as you living a different life and love them, and I think, you think of somebody like Ramdas, you think of someone like Don Miguel Ruiz, who wrote The Four Agreements and The Mastery of Love, and you could think of somebody like that, and you’d be like, that dude’s got this.

1:41:34 He loves every single human being on this earth, like he loves himself, and so the whole world is his tribe. And I think if you’re at that level of integral consciousness, I think you got this. Like, it’s a way that you can really, really do this, but short of that, it’s going to be really hard. It’s going to be like gears of a clock that are slightly mis-synced, and they’re going to grind, and they’re going to grind, and some of that grinding is going to be productive, but it’s also going to be really hard.

1:42:01 And I’m sure you had a lot of friends over the years ask you about it, and I’m sure you gave them some advice. Did any of them have success, or did they have learnings? All of them had learnings. Okay, universally, universally, everybody had learnings, but, and you know, a lot of people tried it because it’s an attractive thing, and when I would, when I would talk to my, like, homies about it, they’d be like, oh man, it sounds incredible, you get to go out and be with these girls and be honest about it, and, and I was like, yeah, that part is incredible.

1:42:33 It is super incredible that I get to do, have the freedom to do what I’m able to do and be radically honest about it, tell my partner, like, hey, I’m gonna go take this trip with this girl, and she’d be like, okay, cool, you know, and we would even, you know, make kind gestures. Like, I showed up at a hotel with one of the girls that I was seeing, and my partner sent us a bottle of champagne and some strawberries, and I was like, that’s f***ing really sweet. So it’s like the opposite paradigm of, like, dishonesty and jealousy and all these different things.

1:43:03 You have these moments that are really incredible, but it’s also so hard. It’s like, really, really brutal. But so that same person that would see the positive sides of it, because maybe they’d go out with me, and they’d see me with one of my other partners, they’d be like, this is amazing, you know, you got it made. I was like, all right, yeah, cool. Now think about that girl that you love so much, you know, like that woman, the, your baby girl, the person, and you just cherish her, and then imagine somebody else just having sex with her any way they want.

1:43:33 How do you feel about that? And they’d be like, F*** that. I’m like, exactly, exactly. So that’s the, that’s both sides. And I actually found that, you know, the women that I knew were like, I think I can deal with that a lot more than the guys when they would imagine their girl or their woman sleeping with somebody else.

1:43:54 I found that just in my own experience, the women that I would talk to about it, like, I think I could do that, like, I think I could do that a little bit more frequently than the men, who, you know, it’s just, I think we have a lot of societal conditioning, and we have these natural protective, jealous urges that are just difficult for a man to overcome, which is also another reason why the learning is so great. Yeah, yeah, that’s powerful. Well, I appreciate you sharing that, and congrats, and yeah, I’m just, I’m happy for you, man.

1:44:22 That’s it. Yeah, thank you. You seem really happy, and she seems amazing, and you guys seem great together, and you know, you’ve been through this whole journey, and I, I know a lot of people that have watched you and learned, and I heard some of your comments, and it’s a massive learning experience. I mean, Jesus, like you said, to really understand or to try to unpack all those visceral reactions you’re having and why is this, and that’s deep, that’s super deep.

1:44:45 I just want to finish on the book, you know, your first book, Own the Day, was about, you know, these, these series of practices that you put in, you know, kind of actual physical things you did I think to kind of prepare your mind on a daily basis. But like, long term, this is Master Your Mind, Master Your Life, where I think you’re going deeper into the mind. Can you just talk about what the book is about, and is it like things that you’ve learned more in the last few years, or is it like your whole life?

1:45:13 A little bit of both, you know. A little bit of both, because these are things that I’ve really learned through all of the different journeys that I’ve been on, from that first vision quest to, you know, the darkness retreat that happened this January, to all the other transformational experiences with the cold and the heat and the ice and ways that I can kind of put my stress test myself, my own psyche. Polyamory is a huge teacher. So all of these different things, and trying to condense these and everything with Onnit, you know, all of the learning that I’ve had, all the ways that I’ve sought extrinsic pleasure and validation and then found that really where the wellspring was, where the source of that joy and freedom was, was all internal, you know, being present with the small pleasures of everything in life.

1:45:58 So I’m taking all of these learnings, doing a ton of research, and then creating my own version of the hero’s journey of the mind, like the 12 essential steps that you should take that everybody can take to kind of lead their mind on this journey, where they can get to that state of freedom, get to that state like I was when I took my blindfold off and I looked out at the world and was just flooded with joy and gratitude, and this feeling of just immense, immense bliss at our existence. And try and take people through that journey and say, like, these are the levels that you need to follow, and it starts with really understanding the narratives that we have. And that’s a great thing that I think your podcast does a great job of.

1:46:43 It expands the conventional narrative. It says, all right, this is the conventional narrative, here’s an alternative hypothesis, look into this. There’s a lot of institutions and structures that may not have your best interest at heart. There may be billions of dollars, there may be political power, there may be all kinds of things that are motivations that are skewing what people think. There may be just the fear that people feel themselves.

1:47:06 So look at the narratives that are out there in the world, choose, you know, choose narratives that are more helpful, which really involves taking your own power back, like understanding the power that we have of our own minds to create our reality. So it starts with that, which is, like, the hero’s journey. It’s the ordinary world. You have to look at the ordinary world and say, this is the ordinary world. This is what everybody says.

1:47:27 If you’re depressed, take a pill, you know? If you got this situation, you know, this is, this is what we expect you to do, you know? Getting a bunch of money, that’s going to make you happy. Like, all of these conditioned narratives that we have, and take a look at those, and then say, all right, maybe there’s another hypothesis, you know, maybe we have a lot more power ourselves to find our own happiness and joy within us, and then start to go on the journey.

1:47:51 Find your purpose, commit to that purpose, cultivate those true allies and the tribe, practice gratitude, learn how to love yourself unconditionally. Do the, you know, use the tools to heal your trauma, face your fear head on, start to identify with that whisper in your head, that potential that you have that’s always kind of guiding you to what’s possible, you know, and then really live in the present and enjoy this experience we have. So breaking that out into 12 different steps and levels, talk about all the times I’ve failed, all the ways that I’ve been mastered, and that was one of the things I did in Own the Day.

1:48:27 Each step had both getting owned and owning it, so the contrast of, like, all right, this is me when I totally f***ed this up, and this is how I felt, and it was terrible, and this is other people, and these are historical examples of different situations where we’ve made these mistakes, and this is the result, and then here’s what it looks like when you transcend this level, when you move on beyond this level, learn the lessons and adapt. So it’s a beast, this new book that I’m working on. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s absolutely a beast.

1:48:57 It’s actually the mind is more complex than the body. As I think a lot of people can understand, the body is a lot simpler, input equals output in a more kind of regular pattern, but trying to break that down into a journey that everybody can go on. So I’m just learning every day as I’m doing the research, and then I’m kind of putting words to these ideas, and it’s been f***ing beautiful, a little beautiful hell of me trying to sort all this out, as I think any big writing project is.

1:49:23 So, yeah, it should be out late spring next year, and I’m just really excited to get this out, because this is, I think, is, you know, more, it cuts to more like the fundamental things that really we have to support the body. That’s like the base layer, the, of the Maslow’s pyramid of needs. Like, we have to get the body right, and I think Own the Day does a great job of talking about all of these fundamental practices throughout every period of the day that are going to help support your body, because when the body is in pain, or the body doesn’t have enough energy, or you’re not thinking about the basic things in the right way, it’s going to be hard to, like, expand, you know, go beyond that to the mind.

1:50:01 So this, but this one’s tackling the mind itself, and, uh, and that’s just a really rich and robust topic, and I think the way that I’ve structured it is going to be really helpful to people, and that’s the goal, you know. I want, I want everybody, like I said, I want everybody to feel that kind of joy and love and zest for life and appreciation for each other, because that’s what’s going to change the whole collective. It starts with you feeling it yourself, because when you feel it yourself, your actions are naturally going to flow from that.

1:50:28 You’re going to want to protect the things you love. Well, I’m excited to get a copy of it. Again, your passion is coming off the screen again, so these are two things you should definitely spend some time on in the next year: the book and the tribe, for sure. Just want to finish with a few questions about you. If I were to ask five of your best friends what is Aubrey’s superpower, how is this man able to do everything that he does, what would they tell me?

1:50:53 What are some of the things that I might hear from them? I think probably they would say that it’s my honesty. It’s the vulnerability of my honesty, you know, is, is just being if I’m crushing it at something, I’m not gonna downplay myself and pretend that I’m not, just because it makes everybody more comfortable. And if I’m getting [expletive] my ass kicked, I’m gonna let, I’m gonna let you know that too. Like, I’m going to let you know the honest truth about what’s going on with me, and I think that honesty allows me to learn so much faster and also get supported so much faster, and people can trust that.

1:51:29 You know, it’s not like when I was polyamorous, I was like, check out all these girls I’m able to date. You know, this is awesome. I was like, yeah, okay, this is awesome, but I’m also getting devastated regularly, you know, and I think people really appreciate that, and I think that’s, you know, that’s the superpower. It’s just being, being honest, you know, having the courage to go out and test myself, and then honestly reporting back, like, what happened, like, how was this?

1:51:55 And I think that’s what’s probably the most, you know, significant defining factor. It’s not that I have some incredible talent that I am just writing on this talent level. I’m just putting myself in uncomfortable spots and then reporting back the honest truth about what I’m seeing. That’s powerful, man. That is a superpower in its way, I guess.

1:52:16 What was the best day of your life, and the worst, man? That’s interesting. You know, I think there’s the best days. The best days of my life, I think, you know, getting with my new partner Vilana, you know, some of those moments where that actually opened up and I realized the potential of my life, how much that would dramatically shift with the love like hers, you know, that’s up there. Some of these amazing transformational experiences I had, those are some of the best days.

1:52:49 Of course, you know, those key moments that day where I was gonna meet Joe Rogan for a 30-minute coffee, and it turned into a four-and-a-half-hour, you know, chat about everything in the cosmos, you know? And I knew that I had, like, a real friend and ally, and there’s so many, like, beautiful key moments like that, that all, it would be hard to rank them all in priority. And of course, like I said, you know, doing mushrooms on the slopes, you know, I got to put those up pretty high.

1:53:15 Some of the moments with the Fit for Service tribe, you know, just experiencing what it was like to see a tribe come together. And then some of the hardest moments, of course, some of those moments in, in polyamory were absolutely just grueling and brutal. You know, I remember there was one moment in, uh, I was in a hotel room in New York, and this was when my partner was with a particularly, a physically aggressive lover, not anything that was like that she didn’t want to do, but it was just his natural inclination, and it was so hard for me.

1:53:47 I, I didn’t think I could go on, and I didn’t know what I didn’t know what to do, so I’m not one that prays often. You know, I don’t believe in an anthropomorphized deity, you know, so I don’t really pray, but at that point I was out of tools, I was out of everything, and I was just like, please, please, please, like, I need help. I just need help. Like, whatever spirits or forces or guides are out there, just like, please, I’m just sitting on the wood floor, just crying, my back up against the bed.

1:54:18 And, you know, fortunately I got some guidance. It was kind of poetic, which I might as well share. I got this, this kind of guidance that came through, and it said, the sun does not judge itself by the shadows that it casts. I was like, what does that mean? I was like, oh, like, I’m reflecting back on myself based on what she’s doing, you know, the effect that I’m having on the world, and it really taught me about the importance of just being the sun, of just shining and loving myself, and so there’s these key moments that have had turning points, so every dark moment, every time I’ve hit that rock-bottom moment and there’s been, there’s been a lot of those, for a variety of different causes.

1:55:01 Um, you know, I haven’t experienced some of the intense, most intense traumas that a lot of people have experienced. I don’t have one of those moments, like, uh like a soldier might have from war, or like someone who’s experienced some certain atrocities in their own life, but all of these small moments have brought me into the darkest darkness, into the deepest cave of my own psyche, but always reliably on the other side of that is some amazing pearl of insight and some amazing pearl wisdom. So when I look back at the worst days of my life, they’re also some of the best days of my life, because they facilitated the necessary response and adaptation that actually brought me to where I am.

1:55:39 So I think what’s hard for me about that question is I’ve done such a good job, you know, looking at these things and then finding the value of them, even my car wreck, when I inexplicably blacked out driving my car in the middle of the afternoon after a good sleep and a nice smoothie, blacked out, ran into a guardrail, the guardrail cut off and came through my car and almost slipped my throat and like mangled my face, and I woke up in the hospital. Like, even that moment I knew, like, oh, I’m gonna learn something really important here. So yeah, that was a terrible day, but the importance of, like, everything I learned after that, to really appreciate that I could smell and see and taste and kiss, you know, in my normal life, as soon as I was gonna heal.

1:56:23 Like, all of those lessons are so valuable, that, you know, I’m grateful for all of those hard times, all of those brutal times that I’ve experienced. Yeah, when I asked that question to someone who’s kind of aware, I always get that feeling, you know, like, I get that laugh when you’re when you say that, because people that are aware realize that the worst days are actually your best days too. And I saw that, I saw that car wreck. Jesus, Aubrey, that’s gnarly.

1:56:50 Looking at the car wreck is gnarlier than looking at your face after the day. I mean, that’s scary. You know, you’re lucky to be alive, you know? Yeah, so, man, no doubt. I mean, I, I think what happened was, as I blacked out, I had my foot on the accelerator, and I think I accelerated, and I had one of those fast Teslas, so the Tesla goes, like, it picks up speed super quick.

1:57:14 So who knows how f***ing fast I was going into that guardrail? You know, I’m just so grateful that there wasn’t another car there or anything, you know, because I just passed that, blacked out, and then accelerated and just mangled the car. Unfortunately, it’s a super safe car, and everything had to work out just perfectly for me to be all right, but car was mangled, my face was mangled, but I’m all right. Yeah, you are, and you made it through with the story to tell.

1:57:41 I know. So, uh, I’m very happy that you did, and yeah, you’re a completely transformed guy on the back of that. What, what scares you, Aubrey? When I get scared, I’m scared that, you know, that Gandalf’s gonna come too late, to go back to that metaphor that I use, that the psychedelics that are becoming legal and that, you know, everything that can really help humanity before humanity implodes is going to be too late, and and I can get lost in those, in those fears, and that’s the impetus for faith.

1:58:17 You know, that’s the impetus to not have faith in some deity, like I said, but just to have faith that this is the natural compression that’s going to create the adaptation. Like, we needed this hardship. We needed all of these challenges, all of these structures that are corrupt, everything that exists, to actually become aware and become aware of ourselves and become aware collectively. So, but sometimes I’ll get lost in that, you know, like, f***, I don’t know how this is ever gonna reach scale.

1:58:44 Like, I don’t know how it’s ever gonna be enough. Like the orcs are gonna win, you know, and it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be Mordor, you know, in mass, and, uh, and I, I can get scared of that sometimes, and that’s really where I have to just anchor to that. You know, what, like, maybe this is just like that giant ayahuasca ceremony, or like a macrocosm of my own life, and this compression is what’s going to create the rebound, and I just have to anchor to that faith, because, and do my best, and what really gets me through that is just the kind of, the Spartan ethos.

1:59:15 Like, all right, maybe, maybe this is too late, maybe we’ve gone too far, and it’s, you know, we’re never going to be able to go back. But how do I want to orient myself to that, you know? Like, just like the 300 at Thermopylae, you know, with your shielder on, you know, like with your shielder on, like we’re gonna fight to the last man, and if I do that, like, I know I’ve done my part, I’ll have no regrets, you know, so if the orcs overrun us, if the, if the Persian king swarms us, like, all good, you know, we’ve gone out, we’ve gone out like a hero, and and that actually gives me, like, a deep sense of peace, and just, all right, like, I can do that, you know, I can do that.

1:59:55 Yeah, how do you want to go out? I thought about that the other day. Great thing about having kids is you can just project, right, to them and say, how would my boys want to see me go out? And then, and then, like, I’d like to go out just like that, you know, fighting, you know, not cowering, you know? And, uh, yeah, it’s something that actually you can try to get some positivity out of.

2:00:16 What would we be surprised to learn about Aubrey Marcus, something non-CEO-like, non-warrior-like, you know, non-that stuff, something you do that we might not know? You know, what’s great about having, you know, my partner Vilana is she’s, she’s such a playful spirit, you know? She’s also a medicine woman and incredibly deep and a sound healer, and has that aspect, but most of the time she’s just so playful that it brings out so much of my own playful side.

2:00:43 So if anybody wants to see, like, the silliest, most playful side of Aubrey Marcus, like, follow her on social media, because she’s at Vilana Marcus, V-Y-L-A-N-A, and she’s always filming me doing the silliest things, you know, and things that. So when I was, when I was a boy, like, I loved, like, He-Man and swords and all kinds of things, but I also loved My Little Ponies. Like, I just, I loved them. They were pretty, and I would have them, and I had long hair.

2:01:11 Yeah, it was like my little Genghis Khan harem of My Little Ponies that I would have, and then I have, like, my warriors. So recently, like, in our shower, we have this, like, little shelf where I put these figurines. My sister bought me a couple, and I started buying some more. I got a Thundercat up there. I got Bruce Lee that has a dragon on them, and then I was like, I want my Little Pony for the little shelf there, so she’ll like film me opening my Little Pony package and all, and the first thing I did was smell it, because I remembered when I was a kid, like, My Little Ponies had this little, like, pleasant plastic smell, or rubber smell, that I was, I was like, oh, they don’t smell the same, they’re not the same, which is probably good, because whatever that smelled like back in the ’80s, I’m sure was toxic.

2:01:50 So it’s probably better than it is, like, it is now. But there’s you know, really when I’m at my best, I’m just playing and having fun and being silly, and I think that’s what you’ll see when you go deeper and deeper under the layers, because a lot of the podcasts and things, it’s me, intellectual ideas and big concepts, but when I’m my happiest and when I feel like I’m my true self, I’m just being a goof, you know, just playing and being a goof. Aren’t we all?

2:02:19 Right. What’s the future of Austin, Texas, and is it going to change when Joe Rogan rolls into town? It is, I mean, this is, this is now, like, an epicenter of media, you know? I mean, I, I think people have underestimated the Joe Rogan effect for a while, you know, and I think Onnit is just one of the many things that he’s put his energy into and really helped blossom, but there’s, you know, podcasting at large has greatly benefited from what he’s done, and I think still he’s underrated for what he’s causing.

2:02:53 And so him anchoring here in Austin and throwing his flag down here, there’s already so much here. I mean, Tim Ferriss is here, and so many other businesses are moving, but with so many people that are going to be going, coming to his podcast, coming to a studio here in Austin, it’s going to become an epicenter, and I’m excited about that. I mean, Austin’s been a great town, and I’ve been here 24 years, and I’ve just watched it. You know, some people complain, oh, it’s not the same, like f*** that, it’s better it’s better every day.

2:03:21 Like, it just keeps getting better, and I think it’s just going to keep getting better, and I’m incredibly excited, you know, just to have that many people who are coming through on a regular basis, and then I’m sure some of them are going to see it and see the beauty of this town and want to move as well, so I think this is going to be, this is going to be a real epicenter for a lot of change and a lot of progressive ideas and a lot of amazing people all gathering around the city, so I’m stoked. It’s super exciting. We’re coming over for a trip.

2:03:50 I was telling you before we started, you know, we did a trip to New York City this year and interviewed like 20 people. The plans would go to LA and the next viable city Austin, because I know so many cool people there, like Tim Kennedy and, you know, all these other people. I want to go out and do a sheepdog training. I know he’s training on Onnit all the time, and Ferris is there. Like you said, you guys are there.

2:04:10 Some great time. I’m just, you know, it seems like a great spot to be, so we can’t wait to have you, man. That’s gonna be great. I’m gonna come down and train with you as well. How’s your relationship with Joe Rogan changed over ten years, and is it hard to go from someone who’s a friend, and then you’re a podcast guest, and then you’re doing business together, and then now, I guess the future is unknown?

2:04:31 Is how has that been? It’s, you know, it’s evolved in a lot of different ways. I think there’s, he’s, you know, he’s just grown more and more momentum, you know, as things have gone on, and it’s been beautiful to be a part of that, and to watch it, and to, you know, kind of cheer it on from the sidelines. And as I said, I’ve been on the show a lot, and we’ve supported each other in a lot of different ways. I think it gets kind of interesting when the business gets really significant, you know, when all of a sudden you’re talking, now this is a big business.

2:05:02 You know, this isn’t a little project where, me and you are kind of figuring stuff out and chatting about ideas and coming up with stuff. Now this is a massive business, and with that, you know, lawyers get involved and different people get involved, and there can become tension in a friendship when things get that large. And so I think the intentional effort is to kind of continually anchor to that kind of friendship and support, and certainly that’s, you know, that’s been a journey as well, is just trying to maintain that alliance and that friendship when there’s lots of other outside forces in this giant machine that’s now like connecting us as friends, and, you know, so it’s been a beautiful journey as well, to just kind of figure that out.

2:05:48 Like, what’s it like when you start a business with a friend? Well, it’s super fun as things are growing and starting to get easy, then you have this massive juggernaut, and that’s when you see a lot of these partnerships have struggle, but I think, you know, the beautiful part of Joe and I is we’re just committed to being honest and being truthful, and like getting back to those core principles, and I think that’s what’s, you know, kept this intact and kept us rolling forward. So You know, I do.

2:06:14 A lot of people say don’t do business with friends. I say, you know, absolutely do it, just know that it’s going to cause some challenges for sure. It’s another factor. Now this is a third entity, you know, Onnit’s like it has a life of its own. And yes, we’re, you know, shepherds, and we’re parents to a certain degree, but it has its own life, and that organism is gonna, is gonna sway this way, in that way, and it’s gonna, you know, present challenges.

2:06:40 Yeah, learning experiences. Final couple questions. I’ll give you our usual here. If you could pick up the phone and call up 20-year-old Aubrey based on everything you know now and give that young man some advice, I might be able to guess what you’re going to say, but what would you tell him? access and insights from our high-performance guests on wealth creation, productivity, leadership, morning routines, health and well-being.

2:07:14 To join our tribe community, go to londonreal.tv/tribe. Now let’s continue with the show. Incredible advice. Incredible advice. I just had a flashback.

2:07:27 I had Laird Hamilton on a little while ago, and I asked him at the very end, and he said, he said turn it off. That’s what he said, turn it off, that was his advice, you know, which is a similar way of saying just think about, worry about you. Uh, Aubrey, it’s worth denying your weight. Look, I just want to thank you so much. You know, it’s hard for you to know all the people you influenced, and when you hear someone say that they had Jonah podcast 10 years ago, I’m sure it’s hard to even process, but yeah, all the stuff you’ve done has had a massive effect on so many people around the world, including me.

2:08:02 And like you said, the Rogan effect was massive. It’s why I started London Real, and it was those early conversations. I can’t emphasize enough to you, back in the day, when it was on Ustream, when it was on Vimeo. This is before Rogan was on YouTube, right? I was like, early adopter, because I was a UFC fan and I was a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu guy, so I went deep down the rabbit hole, and literally I, I still remember, on a Sunday afternoon, sunny afternoon in London, listening to a podcast you have with Rogan, I think it was a later one, like 127 or something, and the three-hour conversation on Vimeo.

2:08:38 I’m hanging out with guys I would normally never hang out with, talking about things that nobody else was talking about, you could never talk about anywhere, unless maybe you were, you know, a beatnik somewhere, and it just really connected me to people when I was completely disconnected. You know, I was all about me and trying to make as much money as possible. I was drinking myself to death. I was alone. I was depressed, and you guys gave me that tribe, if you will, and you guys really were, like, honestly, one of the few comforting things in my life was, like, that podcast.

2:09:09 Hard to actually, uh, hard to overestimate it. You know, so, uh, thanks for that, and of course, thanks for taking me on this crazy journey, man. Yeah, man, yeah. It’s, uh, and the journey continues, you know, and thank you to all the work that you’ve been doing, especially in this last year. I mean, it takes a lot of fearlessness, you know, to kind of push out there and share those unconventional, you know, unconventional, unpopular opinions, and it’s important, you know, like, we need the full gamut, whether you agree with everything that everybody says or not.

2:09:43 Like, those voices have to be heard. The chorus has to have all of those disparate entities, and so many people want to stamp that out, and that’s, that’s madness, and you’re really making a stand, and I think that’s absolutely important, because everything needs to be heard so we can control our own narrative, you know, by getting all of the information and not be influenced, and just say, all right, here’s all the information, what do I believe, you know? And that’s the that’s the great gift that I think, you know, you’re giving, is just encouraging people to make a decision, what do I believe?

2:10:15 And that’s absolutely vital, because that’s going to be a necessary part of how we chart the future. Well, thanks for saying that. I appreciate it. I always remember Graham Hancock saying on our show, right before we went on Rogan’s show, you know, you should have sovereignty over your own body, you know, when he was talking about how you should have the right to, you know, ingest a psychedelic, and I think you should have sovereignty over your own mind and be able to consume whatever information you want and then make a decision as an adult, you know?

2:10:44 And when people take that away for us, it just, it boggles my mind, you know? If someone had told me I couldn’t listen to you and Rogan talk about ayahuasca, or, you know, Rogan make some stupid joke about something because it blocks censorship rules, it’s just, it’s crazy. So yeah, uh, we believe wholeheartedly in what we’re doing, and we think everyone should be able to make that choice themselves about that and everything else. So, um, so yeah. And in a weird way, everything that’s happening, though, like the beauty of it is nobody would censor anything they weren’t afraid of.

2:11:14 You know what I mean? Like, who, who bans a book that’s not scary? You know, like, if a book’s terrible, it doesn’t get banned. You know, it never did, but all the banned books became the most popular books, you know, in the annals of time. So all of this energy to try and stamp it out, it’s not going to work, you know, in this giant ceremony of life.

2:11:33 That resistance is just going to perpetuate the thing. So in a way, you know, as much as we need to fight against that as well, and the way we can be like, all right, thanks, you know, like, thanks for giving this all of your energy that’s trying to stamp it out, like, good job. Yeah, when you perturb the matrix like that, it almost exposes the whole thing. So like, on one hand it’s like, doesn’t feel good to be censored, and it’s really wrong, but the other hand, it’s like, you just showed everybody what’s going on, so everyone now sees it, and now they’re like, but this is the internet and I can go find it.

2:12:06 So like you said, in a weird way, it almost defeats the purpose of what they’re trying, and in these weird times, you can actually see things you wouldn’t normally see. You know, when the economy is booming and you go to work and you make your money and you focus on what’s in front of you, you can’t see all the narratives that you’ve been co-opted into. But when it’s coveted time and things are being censored, all of a sudden you’re well, wait a second, like you said, just because you wear a white coat, why do I assume everything this thing is right just because the government says it?

2:12:33 Why do I? And actually there’s more awareness now, in a weird way. So yeah, it’s, it’s a beautiful thing, we’re riding it and we’re enjoying it. So again, thank you, Aubrey. I appreciate you, a Best of luck to the new adventure.

2:12:45 It sounds awesome. It sounds super exciting, and you seem totally connected to it and totally congruent with it, which I doesn’t surprise me, but it’s just great to see. So thanks so much. Next time, let’s do this in London or in Austin. Thank you, brother.

2:12:58 I can’t wait. Let’s do it. All right, man, sounds good. Uh, you’re on social. Uh, aubreymarcus.com for website, or how can people get on marcus.com?

2:13:06 At Aubrey Marcus, Aubrey Marcus Podcast, all pretty easy, all there, and bookout in 2021. Yep, okay. Much love, brother. Thank you so much. Sending you peace.

2:13:16 Much love back to you, brother. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate y’all. All right, thank you, dude. And that’s it, folks.

2:13:22 There he is, Aubrey Marcus, the legend. Uh, I appreciate it for being here, and tune in, and we’ll see you next time on London Real. Take care, you