Listen to Episode 13 here

NEAL GOLDSMITH, PHD. 

Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D. is a psychologist, public speaker and author, specializing in psychospiritual development, with particular expertise in psychedelic psychotherapy. He is author of dozens of popular and scholarly articles, curates and hosts innovative workshops, salons, and conferences, and is a frequent speaker on psychotherapy and change, adult developmental psychology, psychedelics research and policy, and the integral future of society. 

Dr. Goldsmith’s book, Psychedelic Healing: The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development, describes the current renaissance in psychedelic research and the influence of psychedelics on his personality theory and clinical practice.  (A six-minute clip from his interview: “Fusion of Spirit and Science” may be found at: http://vimeo.com/7517009.)   

Trained in humanistic, transpersonal, and Eastern traditions, Dr. Goldsmith maintains a (non-psychedelic) psychotherapy practice in New York City and Sag Harbor, NY.

DEVIN MARTIN 

Devin Martin is the founder of the coaching and consulting company LifeStyle Integrity and consistently ranked as a top Life Coach in New York City. A student of growth and transformation for more than two decades he spent the first 13 years of his career working as a security consultant for clients such as The Federal Reserve Bank and Fortune 500 companies. After more than a decade spent shepherding complex, nation wide projects through departmental silos and bureaucratic gridlock he became acutely attuned to both why organizations thrive and where they fail. Because of his core belief that the fate of humanity and the planet hinges on the level of consciousness of decision makers, he has since dedicated his life to raising consciousness amongst those whose decisions impact the most people. This has led to him working with leaders in business, media and education.

Devin uses an integral approach to coaching focused on helping individuals and corporations align their strategies with both cutting edge science and their hearts. www.LifeStyleIntegrity.com 

MUSIC ATTRIBUTIONS

transcript

OPENING SEQUENCE

NEAL GOLDSMITH

If you were to figure that out, one imagines, you would be happier... You'd do all the things that are healthy and normal and natural to do if you came to the answer to that question...

D.S. MOSS

For the past year, I've been exploring death as a way to answer that question, the ultimate quagmire, the fundamental existential dilemma: 

What is the meaning of life? 

The plan was - that by reconciling my mortality I would find the answer and thus be free to live a more fulfilling life.

And yes, one would imagine that if I were to figure that out, I'd be happier.  

MUSIC: "Las olas del mar" by Melange

NEAL GOLDSMITH

My name is Neal Goldsmith. I'm a New York City-based psychologist.

D.S. MOSS

Don't worry, Dr. Goldsmith isn't here to help me work through my existential angst...someone else does that later on in the show.

No, Dr. Goldsmith is here to talk about something else entirely. 

NEAL GOLDSMITH

All the stories you hear about weird colors, and hallucinations, and emotional excitability, and fear, and weirdness, and stuff like that, those are all the reactions, potential reactions to the action of psychedelics. The action of psychedelic is to

illuminate. It's sort of like the miner's helmet with the lamp on the forehead: Wherever you look is clarified, illuminated, awakened, enlightened.

D.S. MOSS

In addition to being a psychologist, Neal is the author of "Psychedelic Healing: The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development."

NEAL GOLDSMITH

I don't use them in my practice because they're illegal to use that way...I don't do psychedelic therapy, but I'm a scholar of that topic. I'm so fascinated by it because psychedelics themselves are the most powerful psychiatric medicine ever discovered, or, similarly, the most powerful spiritual sacrament ever used.

D.S. MOSS

I attended a lecture given by Dr. Goldsmith called Psychedelics and Death in which he discussed how the concept of death influences the psychedelic experience.  

Specifically, He talked about symbolic death and rebirth in tribal rites of passage,

the renaissance in psychedelic research for terminal patients with End-of-Life Anxiety

and the ego-death experience.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

As I was saying, kind of the premise of the way we open or try to expand the conversation of death and dying, mortality, is it...

...is that we approach it through me in the sense of bumbling my way through an existential crisis. 

neal goldsmith

You mean as if you were or when you had a while ago?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

I mean, while I'm currently ...

NEAL GOLDSMITH

In the midst of ...

D.S. MOSS_MONO

... I think I was born in the existential crisis.

NEAL GOLDSMITH

Good for you. It's like an ever-unfolding Chrysanthemum.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Yeah. 

NEAL GOLDSMITH

It keeps opening from the inside.

D.S. MOSS

An ever-unfolding Chrysanthemum. That's a lovely way to put it.

In my mind, it's more of an onion. Each layer you peel back makes you cry uncontrollably. 

Either way, here are some of those valuable insights I've learned in the past year by acknowledging my death...  

MUSIC: "ARCH CAPE" by The losers

Micah

I try to look for the intrinsic meaning because there is just as much meaning in a William Carlos Williams poem. There's just as much meaning as this cup of coffee sitting on the table. You have to find that meaning wherever you are.

DEVIN MARTIN

It seems like taking care of your death is more about taking care of everybody else.

Daniel

I don't necessarily feel that this is my purpose, but I feel tremendously purposeful in it. I feel like that's an important distinction because I don't know if any of us actually has, "Purpose" as if that would be designed for us.

Alex z

The longer horizon you see in front of you, the more time you have to really improve yourself.

Betsy

It's like ... If we were to just really say it in a couple of words, he's saying you need to man up a little bit. 

Guy

Even if I'm wrong, even if we're not in the midst of abrupt climate change...then our days are still numbered...

..."We don't have long, so passionately pursue a life of excellence.

Bert

I'm sick as a dog, I know that...But the feeling of giving up life now is very hard because it's too beautiful. I find myself becoming part of that beauty. It's in me. I don't believe I am that important anymore, but I am part of the whole."

Claudia

I can't live my life in terms of what I could be or what I should be. There is just what I am. The person I am now is the only person I am ever going to be. I am going to die as this person and at best, I can sit with that and I can face myself and I can confront myself and maybe if I am really lucky, I can learn to love myself too.

SOUND FX: Sparkle magic

D.S. MOSS

Each one of these beautiful lessons was like a layer being peeled from my self-awareness onion, and then, when I finally got to the core - I discovered a problem. 

Chris

In just about every spiritual tradition, one of the biggest, probably biggest impediments to your spiritual growth is your ego.

D.S. MOSS

Chris, the Australian monk turned entrepreneur talks about this in episode 4, but I didn't get it. Like get it, get it.  

It took me admitting an embarrassing idol I had as a teenager to realize my ego is still operating from a misguided set of values and needed to be dealt with.

MUSIC: "Las Olas Del Mar" by  Melange

D.S. MOSS

And so I've decided to dawn the psychedelic miner's helmet to shine some light on that shit.

Please join me on one last adventure into death as I explore the power of psychedelics and travel deep into the Amazon to partake in a traditional ayahuasca experience in hopes of transformation found through ego death. All of that and more in part one of the finale: Psychedelic Ego Death. 

OPENING BUMPER

MUSIC:  "Memento mori" by Mikey ballou

Female announcer

From The Jones Story Company, this is: THE ADVENTURES OF MEMENTO MORI, A Cynic's Guide for Learning to Live by Remembering to Die - the podcast that explores mortality. Here's your host D.S. Moss.

CHAPTER 1: PSYCHEDELICS 101

MUSIC: "Low motor" by Glass boy

D.S. MOSS

We're back with psychologist and psychedelic guru Neal Goldsmith. 

NEAL GOLDSMITH

Every culture on the planet other than Western civilization has integrated visionary plants and psychedelics, sacred medicines, what have you, into their cosmologies and into their spiritual practices, their rituals as well. There's a reason why. It's because they're effective and they're powerful.

D.S. MOSS

Before we go any further, let's talk about psychedelics in general.

The term psychedelic is Greek and translates to mean: "soul-manifesting". Psychedelics, be it visionary plants or admixtures refer to a substance whose primary action is to alter cognition and perception.

Entheogens is a term for psychedelics that are used specifically in a religious, spiritual, and mystical context.

There are three main classes of psychedelics/entheogens to be aware of:

RUTHIE

-lysergamides such as LSD or acid.

-tryptamines such as psilocybin and DMT. Psilocybin being the psychedelic chemical in magic mushrooms and DMT the agent in Ayahuasca. 

-and thirdly, phenethylamines, such as mescaline. The active chemical in the Peyote and San Pedro cacti.

D.S. MOSS

With that being said, psychedelics have a long history of safe use in tribal medicine and sacrament.

NEAL GOLDSMITH

They would take the visionary plants to allow them to touch the netherworld, the substrate world, what we've now after 10,000 years of science we've discovered we call quantum mechanics or advanced physics.

D.S. MOSS

Entanglement, space-time continuum, relativity... These underlying principles of how the universe works are strikingly similar to shamanic descriptions of the netherworld while on visionary plants. 

Psychedelics were also commonly used in tribal settings as rites of passage. 

NEAL GOLDSMITH

...the key word is "passage."

You're passing from a prior state of development, childhood let's say, to the next state of development, let's say adulthood. That's how psychedelics were used in tribal rites of passage, to loosen the tight configuration of what it means to be a child, your identity. 

...Maturing is the best word I've come up with... It facilitates maturation. 

D.S. MOSS

This is where the symbology of death and rebirth comes in. These rites of passage with visionary medicines typically happen over a day or two and are quite intense. The development step is so dramatic it often feels like a death followed by rebirth. 

CHAPTER 2: PSYCHEDELICS IN THE WEST

NEAL GOLDSMITH

All societies have used these visionary plants. Now that we have western civilization we ban them...

...and now nobody takes psychedelics, well, is allowed to in the West, and so we've managed to build this wonderful mechanistic society that controls nature instead of being integrated with it. It's been a short-term gain and a long-term disaster because we haven't had the wisdom and the perspective to keep the long-term in our perspective like we would if we visited the netherworld through the use of visionary plans like the tribal peoples did.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Certainly you wouldn't say though that if Western society did psychedelics then as a community or as a society we would then get back to our truest nature as a whole.

NEAL GOLDSMITH

Yes, I do. I absolutely think that...

What we've done has been to extract with our monkey minds, our brilliant, analytical, categorical minds, and our tools, our fingers and our eyes, we've been able to extract coal into iron into steel; grapes into wine into vodka; opium into morphine into heroin. We've been able to refine and extract the active principal, the power part of nature, and it's gotten us short-term gain, but it's been a long-term problem in terms of depletion of resources of the planet, but also more fundamentally a separate view, a separated view instead of an integrated view in terms of nature. The integrated view of nature comes from having the kind of perspective that psychedelics give you. By the way, it's not just psychedelics, anything really that enables you to see through your hypnotic consensus reality that we call day-to-day living.

D.S. MOSS

Like a podcast on death, perhaps?

CHAPTER 3: OUR HIJACKED EGO

MUSIC: "Sharrock" by Ozum itez

D.S. MOSS_MONO

With all of this detachment from the natural state or evolving monkey brains, analyticals, our ability to, have we also evolved our ego?

NEAL GOLDSMITH

Yes, that's the way to put it...

...The ego is a natural, psychological function that's very effective, and it's there because it evolved because it's useful. What we've done is we've hijacked the ego.

D.S. MOSS

In the beginning of the show I mentioned that I had recently admitted publicly who had been my idol at fifteen and how that illuminated the metrics my ego still uses. 

So here goes...

It was the early 90s and I was living with my mom in Seattle. The narrative I always tell people about that time in my life is that of a shy melancholy kid who immersed himself in music and alcohol to make it through those awkward years. Which is true, I had longish hair, wore flannels, and spent many days just sitting at Jimmy Hendrix's grave.

But here's the part I always left out...

I actually got pretty good grades, worked in the student store, was a teachers aid in Marketing class, and participated in the extra circular business organizations DECA and Junior Achievement. Because when I grew up I wanted to be just like... Donald Trump.

That's right, besides Eddie Vedder, my idol at 15 was Donald.

NEAL GOLDSMITH

Personality is a defensive, acquired, external, strategic development that you do in concert with your parents, and the thing that it generally is is attachment to ego because ego, the natural tool that is effective at interfacing with the world, at categorizing and understanding and analyzing and taking action, that part of us it's not us, but it's a very effective part that keeps us safe.

D.S. MOSS

Now, of course, there's not a human I'd rather be more unlike, but back then he had three things that I wanted: Money, Power and Fame. 

I wanted money, because being raised by a single mother we never had any. 

I wanted power, because I had yet to grow into myself or know how to stick up for myself.

and I wanted fame, because I was constantly the new kid and just wanted to be popular.  

Now, that's not meant to sound pitiful, I made it out just fine. My point is that despite being a fairly evolved adult who just wants to create things of significance I realized that I'm still using a zombie version of Money, Power, and Fame as my metric for validation. 

NEAL GOLDSMITH

Instead of being the vulnerable soul that we're born as, the developing child under parental pressure, this identifies with the truest soul, the deepest, truest, perfect self and comes to identify instead with the powerful ego that is going to keep it safe and keep it away from its deepest, most vulnerable soul.

D.S. MOSS

And so now that I can see the ingrained value system of my ego I'm saying "Thanks so much for the defense mechanism, but I'm no longer in need of your services. You're fired."

CALL TO ACTION 1

MUSIC: Emergency exit by Dr. frankenstein 

FEMALE ANNOUNCER

Ever wonder what Elvis's last words were or the most outrageous methods of living forever? Discover titillating titbits about mortality by visiting "The Adventures of Memento Mori" YouTube channel and be the slightly odd yet endlessly fascinating conversationalist at your next party.

And be sure to stay up to date with the quest for enlightenment on Instagram and Twitter by following @remembertodie.

All of this, and more, can be found on our site remembertodie.com. And now, back to show...

CHAPTER 4: EGO DEATH

MUSIC: "koz yatagi" by ozum itez

NEAL GOLDSMITH

Ego death is the loss of your identity, of your concept of what an identity is, of your concept of what you, a you is. It's you're gone, and that's why they call it ego death, and it's petrifying, terrifying for many people, and for other people it's quite blissful, but there's lots of ways to slice a pie, but a good way that some of the researchers, masters in Houston from the old days in the 60s came up with was four ways, four levels.

D.S. MOSS

Back with Dr. Neal Goldsmith.

NEAL GOLDSMITH

The first level of ego death is the sensory, visual, sexual, sensory, colorful, stage. 

D.S. MOSS

This includes pleasant visual distortions and amplification, appreciation for sounds and music, and enhanced physical touch. The second level is the psychodynamic, historical, analytical and introspective version of things.

NEAL GOLDSMITH

Then you'd have a more serious time. You'd go even deeper and get into psychology. The third level is the Gaian or planetary or holistic gestalt where all is one and you see things as beautifully integrated. 

D.S. MOSS

The fourth and final level is white light, ego death, loss of identity or sense of any wordiness replaced by identity with universal energy. 

D.S. MOSS

Mushrooms, ayahuasca and LSD are all ways to get to ego death and I have chosen the path of a traditional ayahuasca ceremony at the Temple of the Way of Light located in the Peruvian Amazon.

CHAPTER 5: AYAHUASCA

DEVIN MARTIN

Why ayahuasca?

D.S. MOSS

Please welcome back to the show life coach turned temporary death coach, Devin Martin.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Why ayahuasca? Well, I think it's interesting, man, because even like what? Two years ago, three years ago when we first started chatting, it was always a thing that I wanted to do. Then there was this phase where ayahuasca just became ... It almost seemed like such a cliché.

DEVIN MARTIN

Like Burning Man?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Yeah, like Burning Man. Once Ben Stiller does a scene of it, then you're like, "Okay. We've now jumped the shark."

D.S. MOSS

Chelsea Handler doing it on tv, articles about it in the NY Times, celebrity shamans hosting ceremonies on any given night in Tribeca and Williamsburg lofts - You could say we're experiencing a psychedelic renaissance and ultimately that's a great thing. But it also has a trendy stink to it and so I resisted it, until now.      

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Now, it just feels more serious than before. I really am curious and I'm at this weird point career-wise. Weird in the sense of ... I really do feel done. I don't know what the future is necessarily, but I do think now more than ever I'm ready for, I don't know, just maybe to peel back some of those ego layers.

DEVIN MARTIN

I think what you wrote to me was something about ego death, right? You said letting go of ego goals in order to find more spiritual fulfillment.

D.S. MOSS

Devin has gone through ayahuasca ceremonies of his own and has agreed to be my guide preparing me for my trip. 

CHAPTER 6: THE EXPERIENCE

DEVIN MARTIN

How many ceremonies are you going to do?

D.S. MOSS

I signed up for 7 seven ceremonies within a 12 day period.    

DEVIN MARTIN

Awesome. Do you know ... Are they all ayahuasca?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Yeah, I'd have to read up. Yeah. They're all ayahuasca.

DEVIN MARTIN

Are you intending to push for heroic doses?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Probably not. Not the first one. Definitely not the first one.

DEVIN MARTIN

They won't give it to you on the first one. Most likely they'll give you a very small dose.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

I'll see how it goes. I'll push boundaries but I don't ...

DEVIN MARTIN

What I found is most of the places, they will give you a dose and then they will come around an hour or two later and offer you more, which to me was a cop out. I want to be punched in the face with it, so I had to really fight with them to get them to give me a really large dose by the third ceremony.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

They did?

DEVIN MARTIN

Yeah, she was like, "No, no, no." I was like, "I want twice that. I want three times that and I want ... " She finally was like, "Fine." It blew me up. My intention was ego death. That's what I was asking for.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

You knew that going in?

DEVIN MARTIN

Yeah, yeah. I talked about it for a long time with an Integral Life Practice partner and came up with my purpose for each ceremony. My intention actually, I wrote it down. My intention was purpose. Maybe ceremony two was my ego death one. My third one was about finding my purpose. The ego death one was intense. I mean, I literally sat on the cushion, and I just said, "Basically anything about me that needs to die, take it now. Kill it. Give me the death I need to wake up." It got to the point ... At one point, I felt the presence come up behind me, and grabbed me around the throat, and put a knife against my throat. When you're on ayahuasca, there's no hallucinating. There's just things that are happening. They're real. I was just like, "Go ahead." It just slit my throat open. I just sat there and felt the warm rush of blood come down my throat.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

You didn't freak out?

DEVIN MARTIN

I didn't move. Then I got this incredibly warm mothering presence behind me that came up and just patted me on the back and was just like, "It's okay. You get it. It doesn't have to be this fucking dramatic. There's no big opening death. You get it." Then she was laughing at me. She was like, "What the fuck are you going to do about it?" I was like, "It's not over with the realization? I have to. Shit."

D.S. MOSS

Yeah, Getting my throat slit - even symbolically - makes me a little nervous. So I had to ask if there was anything else to expect physically, you know that may harm me. 

DEVIN MARTIN

Every ceremony is physically excruciatingly uncomfortable for a period of time. It was a feeling as if the energy was going to go everywhere in my system to look for something. It was like we're going to go everywhere we can get. A lot of these places, your awareness hasn't been in a very long time, so it's like waking up a dead limb.

Literally in my toes, in my stomach, but on a cellular level, there's some shadow in your system here. We're going to bring light there. It's going to be like you've been living in a dark room for six years, and we're flipping all the lights, and you're going to be squinting but on a cellular level. Cells on my body waking up and energetically being invigorated that were normally dormant. At the most extreme doses, it was me riding on the mat squirming in pain, which led to by far the biggest insights and what I believe catalyzed what I would call a Kundalini rising shortly thereafter, which led to me taking a year off, living on a mountain by myself, developing my intuitive capacity, having all these prophetic and psychic experiences and then becoming a life coach.

MUSIC: "Saquesufah" by melange

D.S. MOSS

A life coach that will be helping me set my intentions for my seven ceremonies. After this. 

CALL TO ACTION 2

MUSIC: "O Cerebro do Morto" by Dr. Frankenstein 

FEMALE ANNOUNCER

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CHAPTER 7: SETTING THE INTENTIONS

MUSIC: "Beti jai" by melange

D.S. MOSS

There's a scene in A Few Good Men - the final courtroom scene in which Tom Cruise is questioning Jack Nicholson about the death of Private Santiago.

I know this scene well because back in my Marine days the "You Can't Handle the Truth" monologue was a rallying cry for us. It wasn't until years later that I understood that Jack Nicholson wasn't the good guy in the movie.

Anyway, in this scene, Tom Cruise's line of questioning is going nowhere and there comes a moment where he knows that he either needs to sit down or go all in and try the risky move of getting Jack Nicholson to admit that he ordered the code red.  

He knows if he crosses that line, he's risking everything. If he goes, there's no turning back and he's gotta go head first with both feet.

That's what this feels like for me. I need to either sit down or go all in. The risk is exposing my hijacked ego bits and then dismantling all of the unhealthy (yet charming) defensive personality traits that I've come to identify myself with. And broadcasting it in a podcast. 

Deep Breath. Ok. As a friend advised me, "Fuck it -  let'r rip." No sense turning back now.   

DEVIN MARTIN

Now, we need seven ...

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Seven.

DEVIN MARTIN

Seven intentions. 

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Bring it on. Yeah.

DEVIN MARTIN

I don't know how they direct you there. Where I went at Spirit Vine, you stood in a circle, and they gave you the ayahuasca, and you said out loud or to yourself what your intention was and then you drank it. I thought that was a really important thing that not all places will make you do. I think you may have to just do that for yourself. I think if you ask a question, you will get an answer. It's 90% not going to be in the form you think it's going to be in... 

...Meaning here's the work, now go do it. Not and now the work is done. You've had a revelation and it's clear. I mean, the story that I tell was like, "You get it. Now, what the fuck are you going to do about it?"...

D.S. MOSS

The first theme we create intentions around is my definition of success.  

CHAPTER 8: SUCCESS

DEVIN MARTIN

Tell me how have you defined success prior to now.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

It's all been through the view of career. Somehow it's a classic case of when this happens, when this milestone of success whether it's selling the first script, then you can allow your life to happen.

Once I'm buoyed with success, then I can have those hobbies and live more fulfilled and ...

That's when you can have kids. That's when you can go on vacation, right? That's when you can go out in public and you're at a party and say, "I'm a filmmaker."

It's such a great story because I met Harvey Keitel when I was in the Marine Corps. He invited me to sit and I realized that, "This isn't that hard." That became this part of the beginning of the story that almost felt like a sure thing, right? I was like, "It's my destiny." Now, it's like, "Fuck. I've been hanging on that for ... "

DEVIN MARTIN

If you had to guess right now what the clarity that emerges might look like, do you think you would drop this dream? Do you think you would let go of the idea of a successful career in film, or television, or entertainment? Do you think your approach to it will change?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

I don't know entirely but I suspect ... Maybe the point that I really want to get to is just not to care about the outcome as much. Maybe still film and script but I just don't want to care as much if that is what defines who I am, right?

DEVIN MARTIN

I mean, is it both redefining what success in your career looks like and redefining what success looks like completely separate from your career?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely.

DEVIN MARTIN

Historically, you do make leaps. You make leaps of faith. You try big things, creative things. You do manifest your projects...There's something about the way you go about following your dreams which is, I don't know, compromised, or ego driven, or not fully, I don't know, not fully in alignment with your spirit. There's a degree of holding back, right? You're not being as vulnerable as you could be.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Yeah, I would almost say ...

DEVIN MARTIN

Noone has ever accused you of being earnest, right? Overly earnest.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Like sincere?

DEVIN MARTIN

Yeah, like overly earnest.

D.S. MOSS

No. I've never been accused of being overly earnest. That's not to say honest. I try to be as honest as possible. What he meant by that was sincerely sentimental.

Ever since I can remember I saw the world as absurd and so I self-identified as a cynic as a way to navigate it. Always one foot in one foot out. Transcendence of sentiment was my form of human uniqueness.

Devin points out two main problems with this -

The first is that my version of happiness is tethered to the notion of success that is measured on finding validation within the world I don't fully commit to. Meaning, I've made it impossible for me to be happy and that I need new value systems.

The second problem is that cynicism, irony, and irreverence have no redemptive qualities in and of themselves. If that's all you got you're just afraid to be real, or you're a narcissist. or a nihilist, or just a dickhead.

In order for these traits to be useful - and they are useful - you gotta balance them with equal parts cheese, sentimentality, cliche and unavoidable vulnerability. 

MUSIC: "Beti Jai" Melange

And this leads us to the next theme of my ayahuasca intentions - my relationship with women. 

CHAPTER 9: RELATIONSHIPS

DEVIN MARTIN

You're not connecting with your heart. You're not having really heart-centered sex. It's not connecting with your voice. You're not living your truth through your voice in the world. 

D.S. MOSS

Essentially he suggests that my energy isn't being moved up from my second chakra - the sexuality/creativity chakra - through my third and to the fourth which is my heart chakra. It's not the first time I've heard I have a heart chakra problem.   

He also suggests, maybe...

DEVIN MARTIN

You're just a judgmental asshole who's turned down a bunch of great women because you're judging them superficially or prematurely?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Yes. I mean, that's the question, right?...

...I don't know. I'm aware of at least questioning am I that pretentious asshole that is judgy?

DEVIN MARTIN

Well, I mean, you judge yourself harshly so of course you're judging everyone else. I mean, you can't treat other people better than you treat yourself. You have all kinds of internal thought patterns that you project onto others minds and towards others. You're a hypercritical person. Your intelligence can be your worst enemy in many ways, right? You think you have to be a certain level of attractive, and a certain level of successful, and a certain level of financially successful and connected to other people. You have all these things you judge yourself on for when you're successful or not. Of course you're applying that to everyone around you. The question I guess is are your standards unreasonable for everyone including you? Unreasonable might not even be the best metric. Are they useful? Are they helpful? Are you happy you're having them?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

This is part of the ego death journey.

DEVIN MARTIN

Would you say you're emotionally available to women?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

I think I am but not openly.

DEVIN MARTIN

You're still clinging to some fantastical unicorn woman you invented?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

DEVIN MARTIN

That has to do with the details of it?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Yeah.

DEVIN MARTIN

Like this height, this weight.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

I'm not necessarily physical, not necessarily physically. I think they all have things that I admire, maybe qualities that ...

DEVIN MARTIN

You wanted to be yourself?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Yeah, yeah.

DEVIN MARTIN

That's the wrong ... I think that's the worst to date is when you're searching for an idealized version of yourself as opposed to somebody who polarizes you and complements you.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Yeah.

DEVIN MARTIN

Do you ever date anyone who's just radically outside your ideas of what you want?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

No.

DEVIN MARTIN

Totally different from you? Maybe this is an ayahuasca ceremony or two that needs to happen ... It sounds like you need to somehow dissolve your obsession with dating yourself.

MUSIC: "Beti jai" by Melange

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Yeah, I really do think it's this whole ayahuasca trying to peel these layers of construction that I ... It's funny. I recognize them but it seems like somehow I can't transcend them.

DEVIN MARTIN

Intellectual recognition is paltry at best. You can have massive intellectual realizations. Then until they get down into the fabric of your body, you don't actually live that way.

Hopefully, you don't resist. You become comfortable there and you feel safe. You start to open up and relax. It just naturally works on a deeper level. Then also you become comfortable taking higher doses so you can push yourself a little more. By the end, you're barely connected to New York City and normal waking reality like the rest of us.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

That's the thing. Maybe I'll never come back.

CONCLUSION

D.S. MOSS

So with that, we create my seven intentions for each of my seven ceremonies.

Starting tomorrow I start my three week diet of no alcohol, caffeine, salt, sugar, sex -including self sex - animal fat, red meat, pork, ice, and spices. And then I'm off to the jungles of Peru. 

Thanks for following me on my journey, I'm D.S. Moss and will be back again in two weeks for The Adventures of Memento Mori finale Psychedelic Ego Death, part 2.

Hey, if you've enjoyed the show and want to stay up to date with what happens next please follow us on the social media @remembertodie and subscribe to or newsletters on our site www.remembertodie.com   

And please write a review on iTunes or your podcatcher of choice. 

Thank you.

RUTHIE

A NOTE OF RESPONSIBILITY: 

Psychedelics, when used properly, have the potential to ease anxiety in the dying, interrupt the hold of addictive drugs, cure post-traumatic stress disorder and induce spiritual and personal maturation.

However, psychedelics can also potentially be harmful if misused. For the unprepared, psychedelics can engender unexpected, intense, and unpleasant experiences such as temporary psychotic breaks and trigger permanent mental illness in the predisposed. While in a psychedelic state people are also more vulnerable to suggestion and indoctrination.

It is highly recommended that those interested in the effects of psychedelics do their homework and avoid them if you or anyone in your family has a history of psychotic or schizoid conditions.

CLOSING BUMPER

MUSIC: End with our theme music

FEMALE ANNOUNCER

The episode was produced by Josh Heilbronner and D.S. Moss Theme music composed by Mikey Ballou. This has been a production of The Jones Story Company. Until the next time... remember to die.