BIOHACK Your Body, Connect to Your SPIRITUAL Self, and UNLOCK More Energy Naturally | Ben Greenfield

hope you enjoyed the episode brought to you by our sponsor thrive get 50 off your at-home gut health test when you go to trythrive.com impact theory enjoy the episode [Music] ben greenfield welcome to the show well thank you tom welcome back i should say it's good to have you back yeah so i i don't even remember am i am i a two-peat or a three-piece i actually don't know the answer to that question i feel like three i feel like this is my third time i think so then you had to up and move and and uh we're in an all new location however for the audience it's going to look exactly the same because we moved this out nobody needs to know except i just stuck my foot in my mouth and gave the big reveal now that's kind of the same same spot that is all right but one thing that i heard in a podcast from you recently that i thought was really intriguing is you said every day i'm trying to be less of a boy and more of a man i say then by that you did you did say that wow um well trying to remember what podcast i said that in or what the context was it was like what are you it was something about your future like what are you trying to do with your life i mean it was like a real kind of legacy yeah that that's interesting um you know because there is a certain element of childhood wonder and childhood curiosity and even this idea that the things that made you weird when you were a kid are often the type of things that serve you as an adult because your unique characteristics if you're really working as a self-actualized person meaning that you have a distinct purpose in life and often that distinct purpose in life is something that feeds on the unique skill set that you were born with then you're gonna you're gonna retain some element of your childhood or in my case some element of my boyhood right so for me i loved to read a lot and i loved to write and put thoughts to paper i loved the outdoors and kind of like this idea of physical culture but a curiosity about physical culture like why does the body do this why do my legs burn when i go up this hill but they don't burn when i go down the hill you know why you know do i do i you know feel better when i'm playing tennis after i've had macaroni and cheese versus after i've had nothing at all you know and so this curiosity about the human body and brain a love for reading and a love for writing and also i would say a love for teaching are things that really make me happy now in my current job right versus you know some things that i've had to study that didn't come as easily to me when i was a boy but that i still do as a part of my job now yet derive less happiness from like math or science or the nitty gritty details versus the big visionary picture so you you do have to as you age set aside some things from childhood i mean you know there there are there are silly aspects of childhood you know everything from from in patients to um to you know arguing with others to you know defiance of authority you know and all sorts of little things that pop up as you're growing up but yet i think that you need to strike a balance between forsaking the things from childhood that no longer serve you while at the same time staying really hyper connected to the things that you're you're naturally good at how do people that's interesting so i bristle bristles the wrong word it draws my attention every time you come back to this idea of naturally good at do you think that that's something that really matters right the whole carol dweck fixed mindset type of yeah and i won't even drag you into that water i just i am my the central one of the central questions of my life has been how much does it matter that you started out with a natural inclination to something and got a disproportionate return on your time investment and how much of it matters just like this this is my goal and i need to do the things that move me towards my goal and i am hyper aware that there are some things for me like we were talking before we started rolling um when you are given an iq test one of the things they show you is a flat piece of paper in two dimensions obviously because it's just a test and they draw lines on and they say fold this piece of paper if you were to fold this piece of paper what would the shape look like and they want to see what your spatial relations are like can you mentally manipulate an object in your mind which i cannot do right so like crumple up the paper throw in the waste basket there i made a basketball i remember the first time i looked at that i was like wait you're telling me that people can actually do that like they can actually imagine what something looks like just in their head right and uh shout out to charlie lee and then i'll finish the thought here i remember i was fascinated cause i really wish i could draw i've always been blown away by that and i had a friend that could draw charlie lee and he would draw all the time and i was like how do you draw it like in the you know the weird positions where i wouldn't have known to say the camera has moved but that's the idea right low angle high angle from the back whatever and he was like oh just imagine what it looks like and then turn it in your head and i remember thinking what like how the hell do you turn in your head so anyway i'm not good at that at all right so i wouldn't pursue like when i think about learning to draw i could get better there's no question but there seems to be like a real part of the the sort of skill set allocation of my mind that just was given to other areas and not to that so i wouldn't try to lean into something where that was going to be really important for me but i also don't only focus on my natural gifts they're just other things that have been important to me enough that i'm like this is going to be worth putting the energy even though i might get a 0.7 return on my invested time where somebody else gets a 3x right right and so let's let's take someone who is skilled at art at pattern recognition at folding little papers etc and you're both tasks with learning that process of seeing what the pattern is that you're supposed to make or anticipating what the pattern would be when you're folding over the paper based on the lines that are marked upon it if someone is naturally good at that activity like we're also talking about this before we're recording both your wife and my wife we we tend to um or or they tend to see in more patterns and they also would be like like my wife for example is dyslexic she sees words as shapes and had a very difficult time reading growing up and also writing because you know rather than learning phonetically she actually has to see every single thing as an image and as a shape which you would imagine would kind of slow down the the learning process via reading pretty dramatically however she is amazing at art and pattern recognition and imagery and visualization and that's a skill that she naturally has probably because her brain is working in a different way and and recognizing those patterns differently rather than learning phonetically if you were to sit her and i down and give her that task that you described she would learn it more quickly than me it would come more naturally to her however i could still learn it right and and i could still practice it and i could still become proficient at it i totally sucked at math and science in high school i hated it it wasn't relevant to me um i wasn't interested in it it didn't really seem to come naturally to me versus like reading and write i could i could churn out an essay in no time flat you know sitting in front of a blank page and you know the same essay that would have left other students you know crying or scratching their heads or you know drumming their fingers are completely frustrated and so yeah i i think that the acknowledgement that you are naturally good at certain things is it's actually really important as a way of determining the things that you might be called to as your natural unique skill set that's going to serve others best can you define called two yes i i will momentarily um and that that doesn't mean that you can't learn other things it just means that if you have identified that you're naturally good at certain skills then i think that weaving those into your career will leave you feeling a little bit more i guess in the zone or self-actualized or even just more productive and impactful with what it is that you're doing or what it is that you've been called to do when i say what it is that you've been called to do what i mean by that is everybody was born with a with a unique skill set and and a purpose based on that skill set that i would say would be a calling right like basically um you know in my case you know reading writing teaching love for the the human body and brain and physical culture i've woven all those together into you know writing cookbooks and studying the human body and teaching others via via podcast or books or blogging or what have you and i feel like time goes by really fast when i'm doing that i feel like i'm in the zone when i'm doing that i'm happy at the end of the day when i'm doing all that and i feel as though i am i am heeding that call that i was born with myself my wife and my my twin boys who are 13 now every night we we meditate we also meditate in the morning our our morning meditation is all based around what it is we're grateful for and who it is who we want to pray for or help or serve or send positive emotions to that day who it is we really want to be there for that day but in the evening we engage in self-examination and purpose self-examination being playing your entire day like a movie in your mind watching yourself in the third person like a character in the movie and identifying what did i do good what could i have done better and where was i most connected to my life's purpose where did i feel most purpose-filled and it's a really interesting exercise because the way that i explain it to my sons is watch yourself watch that character in the movie and ask yourself when am i rooting for them when am i fist pumping for them when are they making the right decisions and and when do i really feel like they're the hero of that movie that movie of the day and that is the type of practice that you use to answer that question what have i done good this day right and then also where are you not reading for that character where are you grimacing and thinking i think i don't that's the wrong decision dude don't don't go that way or you wasted a lot of time there or you failed at that yeah you learned from it but you failed at that and so that's an important lesson and that serves as the fuel to answer the question what could i have done better on this day and then the final question which may seem at first like it's kind of like that what did i do good today question but it's a little bit different it's where was i most purpose-filled like where did i really feel as though i was living out my life's purpose and typically that question is answered by watching that that character who's who's in the movie in your mind and identifying the place during the day where they just like they were fully present had a smile on their face time was going by quickly they were doing what they were naturally good at uh and and and in in a very purpose-filled environment that is i think really really important when it when it comes to identifying those things that you are naturally good at or called to or that are purpose-filled for you i think that there if there's something that you learn that maybe didn't come naturally to you or that maybe you struggle a little bit more to wrap your head around i i don't think that that necessarily means that those activities can't be fulfilling or can't be a part of your purpose statement or what you might write down if you are identifying what it is that was most purpose driven at the end of the day but i mean for me personally like it's pretty rare that i'll write down something in that purpose statement that isn't weaving in something that i've just been really really connected to from youth that i think is a little bit more almost like nature than nurture it's really interesting the idea of purpose do you think that purpose changes over time for a given individual or is it really it's so anchored to something that you have a natural talent for that it's going to be relatively consistent purpose so so your purpose statement can change over time i think the last time that i was on your show i don't know if we talked about purpose statements but my purpose uh was um to live an adventurous joyful and fulfilling life and inspire others in doing so something along those lines like every purpose statement should be like a single succinct preferably memorizable statement right um and i set aside that purpose statement a year and a half or two ago when i kind of was shifting out of like the ben the global adventurer off doing ironman triathlons and spartan races you know beating up my body and inspiring other people and you know not you know i i love these guys but i was realizing i'm not really like the like the the david goggins anymore and you know or the the you know the the the dean carnazzis or the the 100 uh iron man cowboy guy i forget his name but you know basically this idea of going out and crushing myself as a way to inspire others and being the global adventurer who beats up my body and you know comes back to tell the tale you know the warrior life i didn't feel connected to that anymore honestly i was a little bit like tired and beat up and had been doing that for 20 years but i i still loved to to read and to write and to learn and to teach and to to create and and to sing and to play and do all these things that felt really fulfilling to me and so my purpose statement shifted and literally my purpose statement became to read write um sing and speak compete and create in full presence and selfless love to the glory of god right and so that that became my purpose statement and yeah it might shift in in you know five years ten years whatever yet i've found that every purpose statement i've created has in some way woven in something that i did really enjoy to do when i was a kid or something that woven certain elements of my personality or my my natural skill set that you know puts a smile on my face and keeps me in the zone so yeah the purpose statement can change but i think that the core activities or skills that you're weaving into the purpose statement are probably going to stay somewhat consistent through life do you think that's because we're getting some sort of feedback loop from the what i'll call disproportionate returns like when i put time and energy into this thing like it it comes more easily to me than it might to other people and that feels good the sort of effortlessness maybe it's getting into flow right um or is it something else i i think that um that that idea that something comes easy definitely gives you insight as to what is really going to fuel your purpose if there's something that comes easy to you that you recognize doesn't come easy to everybody right like in my case writing like i said you can put me in front of a blank page and not only will i fill that page but time will go by very quickly while i'm doing it like like you know i'll write for 20 minutes and or and and i'll write for hours and feel like it's been you know 15 20 minutes or whatever like i can write and write and write it's almost like you gotta pull me away from writing and it it doesn't feel very effortful there's some effort put into it but it just comes easy to me it flows and you put my wife in front of a blank page and she'll just be like crying after 10 15 minutes because she just doesn't know what to do flip that scenario put me in front of an art canvas with a paintbrush and yeah i might make something but it's not going to be anywhere near the masterpiece that she'll create and so i think that there is something to this idea of what comes easy to you what is effortless to you to a certain extent and what puts you in the flow as being something that gives you a great big fat clue about your purpose statement that being said i think that that doesn't mean that when you're self-actualized and living out your life's purpose statement that all of work is play that that you never feel as though you kind of have nose to the grindstone and and you're you know you're sweating a little bit and and it's hard work and you're tired at the end of the day but for me it's a different tired at the end of the day when it's tired at the end of the day with the smile on my face because i know i've been super connected to my life's purpose all day versus tired at the end of the day because i've been grinding against something that i'm not really naturally that great at right it's interesting so so much of what you're saying resonates with me i think it's really powerful for people to have the self-awareness of what they're good at what comes easily what brings them joy and maybe the barometer of did you love it when you're a kid is a good way to find those things but my life has been um it's because every life is an n of one experimentation and hopefully we all sort of look at everybody's input and i'm certainly not trying to reject anybody's notions i'm trying to figure out what they can offer me so here is because i think what you're saying probably feels more intuitive to people i think more people gravitate towards that which is partly why i've explored the other edge and then my life has just been a reflection of it so i when i graduated i from the time i was 12 i knew i wanted to be a filmmaker that was all i wanted to do and went to film school totally a joyful experience but at the end of it i realized i didn't have any talent and that was devastating and i'll define talent so i with all of my focus energy and the assistance of an entire university arguably at that time the greatest film school on planet earth i was not able to turn out a good film and that was that was devastating in ways that i can't explain and the only way that i could begin to claw my way out of a downward spiral i don't think i was ever truly depressed but i used to come home and just lay on the floor to give you an idea of like this was a very dark period for me and i would just lay there like i knew what i wanted i know what my dream is and i have absolutely no idea how to get it and it really felt like the universe had said well you suck at this thing and therefore you're just never gonna make it and that that was you know this is all what late 90s early 2000s so there's no internet there's no like easy access to people that can give you sort of these nuggets of wisdom that'll help you out so i'm laying there like okay what the hell am i gonna do and i wish i could remember what what gave me the insight to learn about the brain but i thought all right i'm gonna start researching the brain and i came across brain plasticity which was extraordinarily debated in the late 90s early 2000s like is it real like can you really change as you get older and because it was debated i made a decision to even if i was wrong i was going to act as if brain plasticity were real and that i could learn anything and that meant that i could get good at filmmaking even if i wasn't currently good at filmmaking and then that when i went and um tried to get into that still couldn't break in even though i believe that i could get better over time at this point um led me to business and in business i really had no instincts and i remember i was talking to gary vee and he was trying to like trap me by saying no no you really were cause this whole thing is it's what you're born with and he was like no see you really were a good entrepreneur you just never been in the environment that brought that out before and i was so bad at business in the beginning that the only contribution i could make to a conference call was to say goodbye and i remember i would get excited i could tell the call was wrapping up and i'm finally going to get to say a word on here right and that's where i started and it trying to learn business plunged me into anxiety because i was constantly in over my head i did not get disproportionate returns it was a brutal slog but now on the other side of learning that thing it i'm obsessed like i now for me i realize this is all a game of solving puzzles once you understand the physics of the situation you can think from first principles and anybody i don't care what your natural inclinations are you can learn to think from first principles once you're at the layer of first principles now you can build up in any industry yeah i think one of the keys there too is relevance meaning when i was hating math and science in high school a big part of that is that it wasn't relevant to me i didn't see a lot of the crossover of of calculus or of of you know um you know trigonometry and and sine and cosign and you know all these variables to real life and when i got to college i remember my first year i had a fantastic math instructor and you know i i was home schooled k through 12 and so my math curriculum in high school for a couple of years was under tutelage via an instructor oh my gosh his name was chris and i hated we had to drive the half hour from lewiston idaho up to moscow idaho to go to chris's to learn math i would get in trouble because i didn't care about math i didn't do the homework and it was super annoying because because nina who was another you know homeschooled classmate of mine would drive up with me and she was just like straight a's just crushed it and you know and it came easy to her and flowed whereas like not only did it not come easy to me but i didn't freaking care like i just didn't see the relevance at all like where's the crossover to this and you know into whatever tennis and and making food and um and and and art and writing and creativity and all the stuff that i really did love first math instructor in college he started to talk about math from a banking and investing and an interest and compounding interest and wealth standpoint well for me you know i've i've always kind of been into making money you know like i used to actually be really surprised after halloween i would take all my candy i would hide it under my bed until the summer came around and then i would take all the candy out lay it all out put price tags on it and sell it to all the neighborhood kids you know i i started investing when i was 13. you know i i loved in and part of it you know maybe and i've identified this in myself a slight spirit of scarcity versus a spirit of abundance meaning i just you know i think i kind of like to hoard wealth when i was a kid and and now i've kind of i've kind of directed that energy or that interest and wealth a little bit more towards a spirit of abundance and sharing and blessing others and giving and charity however that math instructor teaching math through the lens of wealth generation totally transformed my interest in math made it super relevant for me and i remember when nina who was in that class homeschool with me went to the same same college at least for the first year took the same math class together when she showed me her test score like a semester in and i showed her my test score and my test score beat her test score and i got straight a's in math and science all the way through college once science became relevant to me because science was relevant to the body the brain to biochemistry to microbiology to all these things i was learning about the human body because i want to be a doctor and math became relevant because i could apply it to chemistry or i could apply it to wealth preservation or making money all of a sudden i actually did become quite good at those things that i don't think i was i was that naturally good at but but the relevance was a key and so i i think that's part of it too is you must understand the importance and the relevance and you know with my own sons who we homeschool you know slash unschool for me a big big part of it is how can i make this book this lesson this this language learning excursion whatever it is relevant to them now they are boys and i and i know we've come a long way since your initial question but i think that that part of that question that you asked about me wanting to set aside things from from boyhood was driven in part by my sons because i have identified the distinct lack of a ceremonial recognized rite of passage from boyhood into manhood i think that as a result of that we have many irresponsible men walking around who are still although they have men's bodies and they look grown up are stuck in boyhood stuck with what we might call peter pan syndrome right still questioning am i a man am i ready to provide do i need to go out and prove myself in some way and and you know for me personally that was just like doing 20 years of iron man triathlon and spartan races and bodybuilding and trying to look like you know the uh you know like like a real true hardcore man because nobody ever told me when i was a teenager like you're a man now you're ready yo stamp of approval you're ready to provide you're responsible you can survive and you know this is somewhat controversial but women arguably actually do have a time of their life that they go through when they are undeniably becoming a woman right the onset of menses when they have their first period when when they go through that physical change that's that's very very distinctly a sign that they are becoming a woman and many will say that that another kind of formative part of that for a woman is when she's given birth for the first time right that'll get your attention um now yeah i think so i think my my mom told me once ben this would be like peeing out a watermelon and and that that made sense to me when i was a boy okay mom peed out a watermelon that must that must have hurt um with with my sons i wanted to break that cycle of the green-filled men never knowing when they become men and kind of just trying to prove it along the way the reason i think that's so important is because when we look at the epidemic of say like you know fatherlessness in america i think a big part of that is driven by boys living in men's bodies who don't have a great deal of responsibility who feel like it's it's okay because you know i'm peter pan i'm a young boy i don't need to provide i don't need to protect i don't need to take responsibility for my decisions therefore i can you know basically knock up this lady walk away leave her with the baby and you know go off and find my next new adventure because i'm a boy i play for a living like that that's what i do when you reverse that and you weave into the upbringing of our males this idea that has been really a part of many many cultures for a long period of time we see it more often now in in more you know indigenous cultures tribes you know hunter-gatherer you know um tribes you know to a certain extent you could say that the uh you know like like in in in jewish culture you know maybe a bar mitzvah is a little bit like this um but ultimately in most western cultural contexts we don't have this idea that there's something hard a so-called rite of passage that a young man or even arguably a boy goes through that recognizes their transition into either adolescence or their transition into adulthood i did not want my sons to go 20 years of either doing some kind of hardcore masochistic sport to prove to the world that they were a man or worse yet making other decisions that they regret later on in life because they were still living like a boy so both of them you know and this is fresh on my mind what is it right now it's uh uh august right and so back in march they both went through their rite of passage into adolescence however 13 years old okay right so their rite of passage into adolescence involved uh them going off into the wilderness for five days they had a backpack and a little blanket and a knife now this was facilitated by an organization in idaho that specializes in in fostering boys rite of passage into adolescence and adolescence right of passage into adulthood and so they'll do something like this twice they'll do this again when they're 14 or 15 years old at an even deeper harder more intense level but this last one that they did was the rite of passage into adolescence so there are survival instructors there traditionally and i learned this as i was studying rights of passage the rite of passage is not overseen by the father right it's overseen by an uncle or another member of the tribe or to make sure some type of leadership or help them i don't know if that's part of it i suspect that the bigger part of it is in a way it's a little bit of a cutting of the cord right and so if you're dependent upon a parent an immediate parent while going through rite of passage i think it doesn't create as as independent a scenario as if it were fostered by someone else so in this case they've trained with an organization called twin eagles wilderness school since they were six years old they've been visiting that school for summer camps for wilderness survival knowing this is building up to this right no not not knowing that they didn't know about their rite of passage it's actually a cool story i'll i'll tell you more momentarily but it wasn't really revealed to them what they were doing until literally a couple months before when they got their packing list and a letter that offered them the opportunity to do this and also gave them the choice of whether to accept or to turn down their invitation to what would you have done if they turned it down well the letters came in the mail and it was really really nice the way they did this because they're like old parchment paper it's kind of burnt around the edges and has a real kind of rustic feel to it and they both i remember they're sitting on the front portion of the sunshine and they both open these letters and it just basically spelled out this idea that that you know coming in march there is uh there there is basically a challenge that you're going to be given that will be a part a key integral part of your transition into becoming a man and you know you'll need to bring a backpack a wool blanket a knife you'll have uh these you know these calls and these trainings that you go through with some of the instructors prior to showing up out here in the middle of nowhere north idaho and all you need to do is basically you know call this i i forget if that one was call a number or write an email to actually be accepted into the program and they both said yes and and they both had been training with that organization again since they were six they know fire making and shelter building but really the fire making shelter building wilderness survival like yes those are core skills that you want to have but really the key part of the rite of passage is being alone facing your fears finding yourself in a space where you must dissolve your your ego and and understand that there are forces of nature that are more powerful than you and that you you you really um you're you have to set aside a lot of pride and and a lot of egotistical mentality to be able to just go off and be on your own and be with yourself in that in that set and setting so they accepted it they went off they they did the whole rite of passage uh in march and there were about eight other young men who were there at the special place we dropped them off which is called medicine circle my last memory was you know when when they came in we dropped them off the instructors met with us parents for about an hour an hour and a half and and just basically felt out our emotions what we were feeling saying goodbye to our sons knowing that when we saw our sons again it was going to be different because you know for example we don't call them boys at home anymore we call them young men they're given more responsibilities they're given more chores they're considered to or um expected to be more contributory members to the household in terms of the level of the chores that they do and um the the responsibilities that they're given at the house and so my memory though was these instructors came up you know our sons are facing us they step across this this cedar bow into the medicine circle they face us they get blindfolds on and you know my sons told me the next five hours all they were doing was following a drum through the wilderness blindfolded having no clue where they were going and the next five days were everything from you know native american style sweat lodges to sleeping on your own out in the wilderness to you know surviving to meeting with these instructors and having having circles where you talk a lot about you know about what it means to to provide what it means to transition from boyhood into manhood and um it was super special when we finally went back to pick them up after not hearing from them for five days because they're out in the middle of nowhere there's no cell phone or connections or anything out there and there was a final ceremonial fire gathering where you know all eight boys stood before us their parents and they all gave a speech about who they were when they came in and who they were now what their shadow self was that they had set aside and who it was that there was their true self that had emerged so that was the rite of passage into adolescence and when i get home from this trip in l.a they have their gathering feast which means that they have a whole bunch of friends and family members over they prepare a meal there's a celebration they give gifts and that's really a key is you don't just go out and like let's say your son is going to go to a rite of passage so that they're able to better set aside those things from boyhood it's not just go out and do hard right like it's an actual ceremonial recognition afterwards and leading up to the experience that says yeah this is a hard thing but this isn't just for you know for shits and giggles right this is for you to show that you're seriously and responsibly taking yet another step towards manhood and this is for us your parents to show that we are we're releasing some of our you know our our desire to just basically you know care for you and recognizing that you're now better able to care for yourself so you know in a sense i think we've come a little ways in response to your first question but that's that's what i really mean when i say transitioning from being a boy into being a man not leaving aside those things that we've been talking about the things you were good at when you were a kid but embracing responsibility and and going through some type of recognition some type of rite of passage that shows that you're ready for that did you and your wife react differently to them being taken out and going through this so i don't think my wife really realized the um almost like the the seriousness and importance of the entire thing because she'd seen me and my sons river and taran going off to wilderness survival camps and going off and doing spartan races and triathlons together like we've just kind of always done those type of hard things together but i think what she didn't realize was how ceremonial this was and how important it was that we recognize that they really are truly going through a formative part of their lives and after those five days that we weren't going to be treating them the same way and that they were going to be different people and that was in that it was really important that they understand you know in terms of the way that we speak to them the way we address them as young men not boys that that was going to be an important part of the greenfield house afterwards and i think when she saw those blindfolds go on and and you know these big like kind of tough-looking instructors you know to you know take our sons off and she's not going to talk to him for five days and you know you and and that's when she started we were walking down the long path back to our truck you know through through the area outside of north idaho in medicine circle there where we left them and she starts crying and i think that was when the kind of like the importance and seriousness and epicness of this experience began to to strike her whereas because i you know for example when we have like family vacations i'm always the planner and and you know i'm planning out the the flights and the hotels and the restaurants and the excursions the experiences and everything so i had been a bigger part of working with the instructors to make sure that all the ducks were lined up in a row for this rite of passage where she was just kind of like okay you know boys are gonna go off and do something hard so for her i think it just hit her all at once like a ton of bricks you know oh my sons are becoming men and um for me it was more of a culmination of all the things that i've done with them leading up to this point and then trusting for them to go off and do this on their own now so yeah it was it was a little bit different for her um and i think for for mothers in general you know they they like for at least i've witnessed this in my own life they like for their sons to be comfortable and cared for and you know not hurting and not alone and not scared and so i think it was hard for her knowing that you know little taran was huddled up in a debris shelter somewhere you know in the dark with bears around all by himself you know with a wool blanket and a knife and just figuring out how to survive for himself um perhaps i'm a little bit more calloused or jaded or whatever but i just i thought it was cool that my sons were getting a chance to to really face their fears and become men let's talk about thrive did you guys know that your gut is related to so many potential health issues trouble focusing bloating constipation maintaining a healthy weight and skin blemishes like acne and eczema our gut communicates with our brain through nerves and hormones and when gut health is poor it can directly contribute to these types of health concerns my wife lisa has struggled profoundly with gut problems so i know exactly how troublesome this can be unfortunately lisa is not alone in this battle one in five americans are struggling with gut health issues thankfully we can fix a lot of these issues with a better diet and the right probiotics and thrive makes this process really simple by offering an at-home gut health test so you can know the state of your gut health and what problems it 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be uh in most of these rituals when you really look into the more traditional cultures it's there's a an almost ceremonial removing of the child from the care of the women like that's part of it like you're with the women they come and get you they remove you and then they take you out to do whatever this hard thing is and that is very very fascinating and look i don't know nearly enough about this stuff but when i say that it captures my imagination that would be a true understatement i read the book long walk to freedom nelson mandela long time listeners the show will probably be tired if you're not gonna be confused the long walk by stephen king which is definitely not to be confused it's kind of a relevant book yeah and in the book he he legitimately went through um his tribe's um coming-of-age ritual and i found it utterly fascinating and i don't claim to understand it and i need to research it more but here are the parts that i remember and if anybody i'm watching this knows better facts drop them in the comments but um they would strip these boys naked i think they were 14. they sit them down on the ground spread eagle in front of the whole tribe and then an elder or um the tribe leader i don't remember who it is comes up with a really sharp rock they grab your foreskin and they just cut that off and when they do it you're supposed to scream this warrior prayer and uh then they cover you in clay like head to toe and then that night a woman comes and like slowly removes it all and i just thought whoa like there's something there there's some like communication almost like a rebirth from the class yeah like oh it's and it's just so interesting to have the chills that they there's something about the you know the breakdown in their society of the roles of male and female and that it's the woman that ultimately comes and like washes you in sort of you know either the moment of rebirth or the sort of putting back together i don't know i just found it absolutely fascinating yeah i think there's there's some savagery that has been a part of many cultures rights of passage that i don't think is necessary and that you know i know that especially a lot a lot of insights well primarily in in more of an ancient context i would say there are there are you know aspects of modern psychology that we have we're now well aware of related to post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic events that dictate that if a rite of passage is just a terribly torturous event i think that that has potential to wire the cells up into sympathetic nervous system mode like that constant fight and flight super wired up type of approach that could leave someone you know scarred for life to a certain extent um either physically or psychologically or both like you know i i like to read my son's wild west stories and there was one wild west story reading about a native american tribe that you know a little bit similar to the story that that you've just told would take the young men and pierce their skin with hooks and hang them from the inside of the of like a big lodge and then they would attach chains to those hooks and hang buffalo skulls from those chains so they were like pulling the skin away and then the elders would twirl these hanging suns you know with poles you know around and around so the buffalo skulls are weighing them down and pulling at their skin and eventually like the skin basically just like tears and they fall to the ground and they have to like run through the village dragging the buffalo skulls through the village until all the buffalo skulls have come off and torn away from the skin and any that do not tear away they send them off into the field and they just have to basically drag the skulls around the field until they all just like fall off and the wounds are festering the flesh is rotting and then when they come back if they really want to take things to the next level as if that weren't enough they had chopped off like the pinky or the index finger to to prove that they were they were an actual warrior well you put somebody through all that and i i guarantee that especially in a modern day context um you're gonna have you know some some possible post-traumatic stress disorder from something like that uh contextualize that or or compare that to like the woman who got in trouble in new york city a few years ago uh for leaving her son about 20 miles from home uh in a subway station after he had you know grown up traveling on the subway and knowing where their home was and knowing new york city i think he was like 12 or 13 like not super young he may have been younger but either way she left him there as a sort of rite of passage and his role was to get home right to figure out how to buy a subway ticket and take the right line and and walk from station to station and eventually wind up at the front door which he did but word got out about this and she got in a lot of trouble for you know how how dare you allow your son to navigate through the state what if he was kidnapped you know what if something horrific happened what if what if he got lost never made it home you know whatever but i actually think that you know that's the type of modern day rite of passage especially for more of an urban setting that i'm not necessarily against you know i i think that when you get to the point where there's physical damage and potential for death you know in in a very profound way and and you know something different than just like finding your way home on the subway station i think that there are many examples of rites of passage that we could come up with that still recognize that oh you're a man now or oh you're responsible now or oh you're an adolescent now that don't involve just like pain and torture and some of the things that we've seen in in some cultures but yeah i mean i think there has to be some level of discomfort i mean you know like i'm like i said you know i think that a big part of for example me going off and doing spartan races and obstacle course races getting barbed wire wounds and traveling around the world doing all these iron man events and everything yeah it was great for learning about fitness it was great for you know inspiring people to fitness it was great for practicing what i preach and for learning how to be a better coach because i was coaching people doing these events but yeah a big part of it was hey am i man now yo i just did the harder iron man am i a man now like how do i feel now do i feel like i've proven myself now and never did i really reach the stage where i felt as though i'd really proven much at all you know for for me it's just been a gradual realization that you know that i am a man that i can set aside the things from boyhood that i'm a father that i'm a husband that i have a greater sense of responsibility but man it would have been super nice for me to have been given that recognition when do you think that's it it just needs to be formal that somebody cause part of all this to me is like one you have to define what a man is which you rattled off a few things earlier that i assume was your definition of what a man is but so knowing what the target is so knowing whether or not you hit it and then putting you through something where it's like okay you're now like this is the official line right right it's like i could have taken my sons out to do whatever like what san francisco and att park right and technically you know if we had had like six months of training leading up and chat's at the dinner table about yo guys when we do this when we finally cross the finish line they're in the park like that's going to be our our official like coming of age ceremony into adolescence and this this is a big deal and we're going to prepare for this and we're going to have a special like feast or dinner or fire circle when we get home from having done this there's no reason you couldn't take you know a fabricated event like that and turn it into a rite of passage in the same way that there are organizations like that twin eagle school i was talking about that's you know really you know fabricating what could also be just like five days of wilderness survival learning but instead turning that into a ceremonial rite of passage right so i think that the ceremony and the recognition is a big part of it and what's interesting actually is you see a lot of these cultures will weave in and this is kind of related to like the ideas that um that jamie wheel talks about the author of the book recapture the rapture or um what what's the book that he and stephen kotler wrote stealing fire stealing fire this idea of um hedonic calendaring and the the strategic use of certain plant medicines at certain formative times of one's life i was actually i was interviewing jamie and i think it was he and i that were talking about this like you know rite of passage into adulthood is accompanied by some type of ego dissolving plant medicine ceremony maybe the first you know week or the first month that you're a newlywed and married to your wife you're doing some type of plant medicine or mdma-esque type of protocol where you're facing each other you know in bed and going through like that that full coming together as part of a plant medicine ceremony or perhaps when you turn 30 or turn 40 or turn 50 or like formative birthdays things like that and you also see some of that woven into some of these cultures like the use of some type of plant medicine experience because if you think about it a big big part of that is dissolving the ego and and learning about yourself in that state will you define dissolving the ego basically it would be um is it dissolving thinking that i'm cool no it's so there was this lady and she just wrote a book i was reading um i was actually reading the book summary of this book but i now want to read the book she apparently like via what i think was a stroke completely lost the use of the left hemisphere of her brain and wound up writing a book about left right brain hemispheric activity and how it felt to be just in the right brain and it was as though she she lost a lot of the the logical rational um thoughts that tend to just be fluttering through our minds all day and we're just like floating in this space where she was completely open to new ideas to who she actually was versus what the world expected her to be to um [Music] to to just this this idea of going from just pure survival and logic and rational thinking to more love and openness and creativity and a lot of those things that that you would experience if you were to shift someone more into like right brain versus left brained activity for myself when i've done you know plant medicine um in plant medicine in more of like a like a macro dosing type of context like a journey type of context what i find is that i'm more open to new ideas i'm less critical on myself i i think more freely and more these just be clear these are all the traits of someone whose ego has dissolved yeah yeah it when i'm in that state where the ego isn't taking over with all these logical rational do do do thoughts but it's almost like you transition to a state of being and it's almost like a carefree state of being where all you're doing is just basically being overwhelmed with thoughts of creativity or loving others or setting aside fears or setting aside personal self-judgments on yourself that might have come from from an ego driven state and the best way i can describe it is you feel more connected to your true self and and just you know less questions less you know being who i who who the world expects me to be versus who i truly am and so yeah it's kind of difficult to succinctly describe but it's almost as though you just set aside all the self-criticism and others criticism and logical thought and rational thought and left brain thought and instead just you know float away into almost more like a peaceful open blissful state it's interesting i've heard people say dissolve the ego a bazillion times and every time i hear that i think it's people thinking about the sense of i me what i want that well yeah like this lady forgot her name like she just didn't know her name which was really interesting you know and you know just identifying i guess one way i could describe it is you know identifying yourself as a self-dependent self-sufficient loner who can survive on your own versus realizing that we're all part of an interconnected human race that's that's super duper dependent on on love and and caring for others and being connected with others and and it's just you know there's another book called transcend the new science of self-actualization by scott kaufman and that book goes into this idea that to be fully self-actualized isn't necessarily to be you know independent or self-sufficient but to realize not only that whatever purpose it is that you're living out should be lived out in the spirit of loving others but also in the spirit that you're dependent on others and that their purpose and their skill set is something that's blessing you and basically this idea the ego seems to be um somewhat tied to like selfishness loneliness self-sufficiency etc because you're in charge is something that seems to dissolve away when you're in that state it's very interesting so i heard you say that there was a moment i think it was with plant medicine but don't hold into that where you had a moment where you realized i didn't need to be the hero what did you mean by that that was an essay that i wrote about the hero's journey i was uh i was illustrating the hero's journey through the life of jesus christ right this idea of living the ordinary life which in his case would have been as a deity in heaven completely comfortable taken care of you know sitting with god and then being presented with this threshold to cross you know go down to earth become a dirty human get born in a diaper and poop your pants and get scarred and go through teenager hood and all the brokenness that it means to be a human being after being a deity and you know meet mentors and allies and and eventually you know have you have have a a battle and return with the elixir of you know salvation for all of humankind and you know take that that long road back you know similar to bilbo traveling back to the shire and the hobbit and and eventually come back and then ascend into heaven and how we look at this through the eyes of the hero's journey and related to that you know it actually was part of a plant medicine ceremony where i realized that i'm pretty hard on myself or had been pretty hard on myself up until that point in terms of trying to be the person who is going to like save humankind who is going to you know really um not only like be the ultimate go-to source of knowledge for people fixing their bodies or their brains but be very similar to the way that i was brought up like ben you're the white knight ben you're the hero ben you're special then you're perfect ben you know you you can do it all like that was that was really the type of of talk that my parents gave to me and it almost really like despite that being really good for your confidence also gave me a lot of kind of like egotistical arrogance that i could i could do everything and also a bit of um control and micromanaging that seem to go along with that like you know i'm the hero i'm gonna control every scenario i'm gonna save everyone you know my job is the most important and one thing that happened as a part of that that particular ceremony which was like 28 hours long was there was this little part of my brain and this is really hard to describe it's kind of funny because when you're describing experiences like this where you're journeying in a completely different state sometimes people who have been in that state get what you're saying but people who haven't you know it's it's it's really interesting um to to try and voice and detail what it is that i experienced but basically it was as though over and over and over again there was like this little like uh clock maker inside my head trying to uh or i guess maybe a better would be locksmith inside my head trying to open this little safe at the back of my brain where all those control tendencies and arrogant tendencies and egotistical tendencies resided and and i kept being resistant to that over and over and over and over again and that was always followed up with like this image of me like putting on armor and holding a sword and going off to battle and preparing yet again to go and and fight the world to you know to to conquer the dragon and to be the be the white knight in shining armor that you know that that you know saves the world and i remember like it must have been eight nine ten times i kept going back to that place and the music would crescendo and i'll be putting on and then what would happen is i would just go into this dark place and it was just like fire and hell and skulls and you know all the atrocities that have ever been done to humankind and you know the holocaust world war ii and you know piles of bones and i was there fighting like fighting against the fire and fighting as dragons and demons you know all these these crazy spirits and i was defeated every time i'd like wind up bloodied and broken and curled up in a fetal position you know bleeding and crying these are all during this this is psychedelic trips yeah yeah exactly and then like the final time that that music crescendo and i was getting ready to go to battle i i basically thought you know what i am i'm not going to go to battle like this burden is not mine to go and save all humankind from all their sin and suffering and to be the white knight riding in on a horse and and uh that like the the the thought that came to my mind was somebody's already done this somebody has already you know died on a cross taking on all that sin and shame and suffering and i don't need to go off and do all that battling myself and be crucified myself all i need to do is just basically tell people about the free gift of salvation that's already been offered to them and it was like right then i felt like 20 pounds lighter i i woke up with a smile on my face felt amazing and it was as though right then i just started to come out of the hole whatever it was like 27 28 hour trip and i emerged from that just feeling as though a giant load had been lifted off my back that i didn't have to prove anything to the world that all i needed to do was love other people and share the hope that is within me and not have to worry about being perfect or controlling every scenario or you know being arrogant or not accepting other people and you know it was a really really interesting experience but ultimately you know i think the biggest thing that came out of it for me was love others more than yourself be there for others build others up and don't try to don't try to fix people as much as just try to love people wow that idea of how important love is to us as a species it's interesting you and i i think use very different language for this kind of thing um but i definitely get where you're coming from but when i think about us as a species and how we need love and like but need love as in a child a um an infant will fail to thrive as they call it if it isn't touched loved cuddled um and it's i think it was um oh god i forget who said this to me on the podcast amazing woman um and i will remember soon enough but she said tom we have a nature that requires nurture i think it was lisa feldman barrett that said that to me and i remember that just hit me like a ton of bricks like we the way that we as a species have evolved like there is this need for um something back but it it yeah it's so real and so tangible in terms of like you want skin to skin contact and um you know the the actual act of loving and paying attention to the child shapes its brain and if it doesn't get that then the brain doesn't develop right i mean it's crazy to think it is and what what's crazy and super relevant to where we're at right now uh in in terms of social distancing remote work and a definitely greater degree of digital interaction we do thrive on that deeply connected humor in human interactivity to the extent to where we have for example touch receptors called pacinian corpuscles and these things actually respond hormonally in terms of a dopamine release and a serotonin release and a feel-good neurochemical response to actual touch right and that that can't be replicated via a virtual hug or via an emoticon we have oxytocin you know the trusting loving hormone that's released during breastfeeding and after an orgasm and even when we shake someone's hand or we hug them that results in in again not only an anti-inflammatory response but this feel-good neurochemical release that seems to be hard-wired into all of us we have a response to human pheromones that dictate that we can actually read you know for example a woman can can read something as as as as intricate as the as the immune system compatibility of a potential mate with her based on those pheromones that are released by a man that would dictate whether or not the child that they have would have a greater amount of um of of immune system strength based on those two people having some amount of immune system um differences right like the more alike the two immune systems are the less robust the immune system of the offspring might be you talk about that study where they gave the women the shots that have been slept in they said hey just smell it and rank them in order that or the fact that women will choose a different mate if they're on a birth control pill versus not and then possibly even regret that later on like it's really crazy so we have pacinian corpuscles and we have oxytocin and we have these neurochemical responses and we have pheromones and we we now know that there's an electromagnetic signal that's emanated by the heart that that goes out like about 15 feet and the brain creates a similar electromagnetic signal that is something that that we haven't even begun to tap into when it comes to science of human interaction the potential for things like telepathy and remote viewing and you know like annie jacobson has this book called paranormal like it's an even how the military has been trying to study like how do these signals interact and what are these mysteries of the human body when we're in proximity with one another or creating electromagnetic energy that others can perceive so you take all of that and you ask like why like like why from it from an ancestral or or what some might call an evolutionary standpoint would we have all these triggers built into us that respond to the presence of and the touch of other human beings and the the electrical presence of other human beings well it's survival right if you were isolated or banished from your village or from your tribe thousands and thousands of years ago it would have meant sure death being left out in the elements right in that sympathetic nervous system response that occurs as a reaction to social isolation uh which is a little bit different than loneliness because you you know loneliness is simply a perception it's it's a it's a perception that whatever you perceive to be the amount of human interaction that you should be getting is not at the same level as whatever level of human interaction that you are experiencing right so um we we can be lonely and surrounded by 5000 friends on facebook or even at a cocktail party and be lonely but this idea that we have woven into our physiology this sympathetic nervous system fight and flight stressed out high heart rate high blood pressure high inflammation poor sleep response to not being able to physically interact with other humans is built in because there was a time when we would die if left out in the cold and left out in the elements and banished from our village and so now when we're in that same scenario and we see this growing epidemic of loneliness and the host of chronic diseases and depression and suicide that seem to be springing from that even in in a digital era where we're hyper-connected we have to ask ourselves like can we replace these these physical meaningful interactions that have so many things going on that i don't think we've even begun to dig into the science of can we replace those with with digital you know zeros and ones and pixels and and i think that there's something to be said for the blessing of for example during what could have been a horrific economic crisis you know during covet it being a lot less due to the ability to be able to remote work and have zoom parties and you know and see your friends on facebook or whatever it could have been a lot worse don't get me wrong but we have to acknowledge that physical interaction and touch and eyesight and you and i being 15 feet from each other versus me on skype up in washington state and you down here it's way different and we we cannot we cannot deceive ourselves into thinking that that can be replaced with digital interaction yeah going through covet has been because i like isolation now take this all in context of i'm married and my marriage is my greatest joy and so all of what i'm about to say i'm saying within the context of being in a loving marriage and without that i i do wonder what it would really look like but in the context of being married i like to be alone i like to have my space so when covid kicked off if i'm honest thankfully you know none of my employees except one got kovid no one that i know died thank god and obviously my heart bleeds for anybody that did it's absolutely horrible um but it ended up being the business did better through kovid than it did before and so it's like this ended up being this really sort of amazing reset i told my employees i would never let them work from home and now of course i'm like well yeah actually it works a lot better than i thought i do have fears about i think a mixed environment will probably be difficult but we'll cross that bridge but even i now at the you know point that we're sort of 18 months into this thing i'm like okay like it's enough now i can feel there's some part of me that hungers to get out and even even with my wife and obviously regular contact from her i went to a chiropractor it was the first time i'd gone to see a doctor or chiropractor or anything in 18 months and um he just touched me to like you know figure out like where it was bothering me it was so like it mattered i'm not sure what other word he is not like i was like oh my god that feels so good but it was like whoa like that got my full attention in the way that a casual touch from a chiropractor would not have i was like whoa it's this sort of electric thing yeah then i was like jesus not being touched by anybody other than my wife for the last 18 months is actually mattered in some way it's it's sacredness it's the sacredness of human touch that can't be replaced by a foam roller like i can foam roll i can lacrosse ball i can use a little you know massage percussion gun till the cows come home and i feel pretty good but there's nothing that compares to the endorphin release and the feeling of being cared for by another human being when uh when a massage therapist is is touching you there are there are so many things that we try to replace with self-sufficiency or with the absence of human touch or arguably even the absence of nature that just sucks the sacredness right out of those interactions another example would be and you know this might be relevant to you having been involved with with quest nutrition for example and understanding macronutrients right and this whole idea that certain macronutrient ratios have different effects on the on the human body but when we look at nutrition you know i'm not an if it fits your macros guy i'm not an if it fits your macros guy or what's it called ii fym because you know you you can take something like uh let's say you know an atkins diet type of approach and yeah you can achieve a a high protein you know moderate fat low carb type of scenario from you know kafo based meat that's been abused and and you know chickens that have lived in in tiny cages you know standing in their own crap for you know their entire life and you know cows pumped up with hormones and fed grains and unnatural animal products and preservatives and you know hefty amounts of sodium chloride you know all the things that you get in that perfect macronutrient ratio where you're just taking into account carbs and fats and proteins and you could take that exact same macronutrient ratio and get it from like fresh tomatoes grown in the sunshine and kale and a wonderful regeneratively raised cow that was loved its entire life and and fed amazing food and you know and lived out in the sunshine again feeding on fresh grass and when you look at the bio photonic and even even the spiritual energy that you get from eating real whole food derived from nature as close to nature as possible there's a certain sacredness in that and a certain not just physical but also spiritual energy derived from a meal like that that you i just don't think you can replicate if you completely just go straight to carbs fats proteins without you think there's something extra cellular so like i've heard you make reference to the fact that you don't think the brain is necessarily the seed of consciousness so do you think that there's something going on with the actual meat so the cow lived a great life or a terrible life but by the time it ends up on my plate is there something still residing somewhere other than the cell that carries with that yeah i think that there are elements of energy that we're now just beginning to tap into driven a lot by the emergence of interest in the mitochondria and the idea that for example photons of light can affect the activity of the electron transport chain in the mitochondria and accelerate the formation of atp meaning that people who are out in the sunlight a lot or who are using that's all cellular use red light are able to create energy although those those photons are a little less measurable than say like you know glucose or even oxygen and then you get into sound medicine take yet another step towards invisibility where we know that frequencies of sound and vibrations of sound can have an impact on certain organs and that certain musical instruments that are tuned to different hurts frequencies can either elicit feelings of peace and love and joy or feelings of anger and fear and shame even though we can't necessarily take those frequencies and put them into a tube and then we get into quantum physics right where we know that humans seem to be able to interact with each other over long distances via something like photonic energy and that's where we're getting some of those things like remote viewing or two people in two different countries having the same dream and talking about the next day and there's something going on there that's very difficult to measure and even when we do try to measure it seems to change based on some of those slit light experiments where you know it's it it can be very very tricky to to measure photons just because the miracle of measuring them seems to affect them pretty dramatically and then we get to this idea that well when i eat a cow grown on a regeneratively you know over generally run farm you know it was grass-fed grass finished cared for wonderfully and you know and sacrificed in a humane manner compared to a cow that was abused its whole life and and fed fake food and you know and then electrocuted and and you know brought over to my plate you know um there's some type of energy there that i think we have yet to even be able to measure in for example the realm of nutrition science but i i think that part of it really is spiritual i think part of it really is the fact that as creatures on this planet we can't disconnect ourselves from the life force of every other creature on this planet and either the positive manifest as biology oh well i mean i think you know the answer to that question if you've read a book or seen the work of an author like bruce lipton who wrote the biology of the belief or the book the body keeps the score this idea that emotions you know michael singer uh uh you know the book surrender and and you know th this whole idea that your emotions your thought patterns your beliefs can all drive your cells to be in either a stressed out sympathetic nervous system type of mode or a parasympathetic nervous system type of mode and that cells can become stuck based on our subconscious patterns spun in in that stressed out mode that would then cause things like calcium leakage into the cell a change in the electrochemical balance across the cell membrane a disruption in the ability to be able to create atp a disruption in overall physiology and actually if you look at and i think there's something to be said about this things like um you know traditional chinese medicine you see certain emotions actually associated with certain disease conditions right like like bitterness and anger would be associated with rotting of the bones or low bone density or bone cancer right and i don't know if there's ever been an epidemiological study that has looked at you know profile of mood states courts and the amount of angerness and bitterness in someone and things like you know dexa bone scans and bone density or you know or bone cancer or or some type of malignancy in bony tissue but yeah the the link between emotions and biology is undeniable we are not you know well the ancient gnostics would have argued that we are all spirit and all soul and that's all that matters and that we can completely disentangle ourselves from our physical bodies and that that's not important well i don't think that that's true and neither do i believe that we can separate the physical from the spiritual and say that can you help me understand the difference between the physical and the spiritual well i think that the physical would be tangible biological uh cells in tissues and flesh and you know and and all of the molecules within our body that are made up of all these different atoms that we could eventually identify on the periodic table of the elements i think that the physical you know to a certain extent is something that that is measurable that is tangible that is witnessable that is feelable whereas the the spiritual is something that in a sense requires a little bit more faith to be able to believe in that that isn't necessarily visible or measurable and yet is yet or it will never be i don't know if we're ever going to open up a human body and say oh hey look we found it here's the soul right i don't think it's measurable i i i do it do i think that it is something that we can experience or see i think possibly i think that that some people who have been in those type of states we were talking about earlier like an ego dissolved state or you know during a plant medicine ceremony or something like that it seems as though you do to a certain extent almost like cross a portal into something like a spiritual world um can i ask a really crazy question that will help me understand what you believe yes i don't expect anyone to take this literally but um is the human body basically the nft that points at the soul which is the actual thing because if i know you believe that the soul lives on beyond the body so obviously they can't be one in the same but i'm just curious there is some linkage right i mean you ultimately are going through this life you're experiencing something you're meant to learn something i assume like there's some reason from your perspective that god has created humans very knowingly put in this situation um what what is then that correlation between the body like do you even worry about the trying to find some explanation of how the two are tied or it's just like look that's well beyond sort of what the human mind at least at this phase is going to understand it's really kind of irrelevant like how do you approach that yeah so i don't think the body is bad i don't think it's a throwaway i is someone who believes that god made human beings i i don't think god would have made a human or a tomato or a tree or a thorn bush or a lake or a shark or a black widow or a platypus or anything like that as some kind of a just like a throwaway object right i don't think that heaven like because i believe that that we'll live in heaven as part of of the afterlife i don't think heaven is going to be a bunch of us sitting as ethereal spirits on a cloud with fluffy you know wings playing a harp right to me that sounds kind of boring actually um we have these amazing bodies and we have wonderful taste receptors that can taste a thousand different explosions of flavor as we sit down to a meal and we have you know tactile receptors that can feel pleasure and can orgasm and can release oxytocin when we touch other people all those things that we were just talking about and we have the ability to be able to to jump in cold water and feel that wonderful sensation and to sweat and get the endorphin released after that well some parts of the cold water can be wonderful sometimes afterwards more so um and and you know we have hair that we can do in different ways and people have different color eyes there's all these elements of biology and physical existence that are so magical and so cool and so enjoyable that i don't think that's all going to be like stripped out from underneath us in the afterlife or or when we die but at the same time we have we have spirits that are housed inside these physical structures and you know it's almost like this invisible flame that seems to drive things like our our character our personality our our our values our you know how much peace and joy and love we might have versus how much anger or fear or shame that we might have the this idea that the the the physical body is just like a shell a throwaway shell that houses the spirit is not something that i agree with but i think that that the two coexist and that the spirit's almost like the driving force what what we might call the the chi or the prana or the life force that drives this this human physical biological machine and i believe like in in terms of like you know heaven i don't think it's going to be heaven i think it's going to be heaven and earth and it's all going to be just perfect right like our bodies as we have them now but working perfectly without anger and sickness and disease and and and and all the things that kind of annoy us now i think that we'll retain our bodies do you think that will change because those are the things that are the test like why so as you were describing okay you've got the platypus the black widow sharks and all that right and i thought okay if i were going to so i i don't believe in god as we see it represented in religions um there's clearly something i don't understand so i have no problem being open-minded about that like i certainly don't think i understand that's for sure um but as i think about it i'm like okay so god is creating this equilibrium there's some sort of balance and without the shark or the black widow one thing just goes too much and so you have this all-powerful thing that understands this notion of ecosystem okay i can get behind that i see why some things have to eat others and all that and cool um but then when i think about what the afterlife is going to be in that scenario it's actually interesting to me that you don't imagine it just being ethereal because that actually sounds quite boring but then why would we have like anger and we were talking about this before we started rolling there's a flip side to everything right so by having sickle cell anemia you don't shuttle the oxygen as well but you also don't get malaria so there's this trade-off that to me feels like human emotion human emotion has a thing there's a reason for it and if you take away emotion like people that selectively have those areas of their brain damaged they can't even decide where they want to eat lunch and you suddenly realize you can be normal in every single way but if you don't have an emotional response to something you don't have a way to make decisions so even emotion while it may seem like the black widow of the human experience or anger uh it has a role so why do you imagine a world in which that is stripped out i don't imagine a world in which emotions are stripped out i imagine a world in which the negative harmful aspects of any emotion are stripped out what i mean by that is for example uh my my son we were actually talking about this earlier i don't remember if if you were here we were talking about how each week i give my sons a book to read and they they write a little book report about that book and it's a way of me being able to take the host of books that i read on a weekly basis and find the ones that i think would be really helpful for them even though i might not have time to go through the whole book with them i give it to them it's got all my pages folded over and all the highlights and all the underlines they can read it through dad's eyes and see some of the things i found important and then they write a book report about that book and so every week they're learning how to use their reading muscles and use their writing muscles and and put their thoughts to paper and also absorb knowledge in an efficient way so that you know basically they can live their whole lives as voracious consumers of books which i think is a great gift to give them um the book that my son taran is reading right now is called radical honesty because we've been talking a lot about telling the truth and the propensity that he has sometimes has to twist the truth or to tell a lie and i told him taryn you you are hyper creative and he is he's hyper creative like everything from the stories he tells to the fiction that he writes the art that he produces to the murals on his walls super hyper creative and i told him a look that that that creativity can manifest in two different ways it can manifest as a negative attribute in your life and the propensity to be able to tell stories that protect you and yet might hurt others or to tell stories that allow you to get more and others to have less or to tell lies that hurt other people and yet that same creativity can be used for great good it can be used to inspire people and to make art and to tell wonderful stories and to create new things and so i think that many of the emotions that we have right anger can be turned towards towards righteousness and justice um fear can be turned towards like caution or curiosity or like shame can be turned into into into gratefulness with no regrets right there just this identification that something went wrong and i'm grateful for that learning experience because every single learning experience makes me a better person so what what i think is that we have this human propensity based on the fact that you know god didn't make us puppets he gave us free will and you know we do some stupid things because of that but this idea is that we we all have these emotions that can be for good or for bad that can be positive or negative depending on how they're manifested and i think that we won't lose those emotions that will retain our full spirits and our character and everything like that in heaven but that the propensity the temptation to have those emotions manifest negatively will no longer be present if that makes sense it does man it is utterly fascinating i've never thought to ask like the question of what people imagine what would heaven be like like just the fact that you think of sort of the all perfect heaven is like man that'd be pretty boring um so when i hear you describe it it sounds more like sort of this but with some of the edges this but perfect right and and it's like one understanding your definition of what makes that perfect is fascinating yeah and and you know it would be different than mine think about like well why isn't it perfect now like why the hell would god have made a world and made it perfect and then let us it up right your answer is that just that just seems ludicrous well if the world was made perfect and human beings especially uh who who who seem to be um kind of like the more the most complex of creatures on this planet arguably um in terms of just like our consciousness and and our creativity and you know and and in the fact that you know if you read the bible it says like we're the ones who are kind of made most like the image of god right and so there was something special that god did with us for some reason that that he just he wanted one creature that he could sit up there and and be super happy you know watching run around in this wonderful planet that he created and all the you know the water and the green the trees and the forest and the mountains and all the crazy kinds of food and fat and honey and milk and and all these things you know it's similar to when i'm sitting in my house and i look out of my window and i can see my kids and my wife playing in the backyard with smiles on their faces enjoying this this you know oasis out in the forest that i've been able to create for them like it brings a great deal of joy to my heart and in a way i can almost tap into oh this is why god did that he just wanted to make something really cool that he could then derive a great deal of pleasure out of out of watching being experienced with with joy and happiness and love and and i get that it's almost as though you and i could create like a little like ant hill and just watch those ants all day long and just love everything they're doing and have created that yet if he made all that and he just like made us puppets and he could just like snap his finger and you do this and you do that and you had no free will then really you're you're a puppet right you're just basically liking like like an automaton like a robot walking around pre-programmed to do whatever it is that god pre-programmed you to do with no feeling as though you're you're of your own independent volition enjoying all these things on your own so there had to be some amount of free will built into the equation but by the nature of human beings being given free will that also meant that we had the opportunity to be able to not do certain things that or really i would say more appropriately to do certain things that god said wouldn't be a good idea in this case if you look at the creation story like consuming an element of the planet earth that he said not to and i i don't know why maybe that was something that he was going to like this tree of the knowledge of good and evil that adam and eve ate and then crap hit the fan and they sinned and all of a sudden you know had to start killing animals for food and you know people started murdering each other and all this bad stuff happened uh based on that initial disobedience why god would have done that like given us free will and then said oh but by the way you know you have total free will but if you do this one thing like things gonna go really bad maybe he did that so that we could show how much we loved him by actually giving us the opportunity to not love him in a certain way and because he was the almighty creator that made him happy right that there was something that could show there on earth that people loved him more than they loved themselves maybe it was something that human beings were going to have revealed to them like thousands of years down the road once they were ready for it that that was going to be something they could experience like i don't know why but what i do know is that we had some amount of free will and based on us having free will we had the opportunity to make a mistake and we made a mistake and so interesting to me hearing you talk about this so einstein had that famous quote i want to know god's thoughts everything else is just details and that always resonated with me it's part of what draws me to i don't i don't understand math in the slightest but i find myself drawn to physics and astronomy and just like understanding the universe and like the very sort of fundamental nature of what the universe is and as you were talking i was like this is like the the arts versus the sciences approach to trying to understand god's thoughts it's really really interesting and unfortunately i have to rap i'm so sad i've enjoyed the life out of this conversation and i just want to put one period on this even the way you hold your face is different from the last time that we met it is utterly fascinating not that it's the way you're holding your face it is way more relaxed and just um it's utterly fascinating and all leaning towards the good it is really interesting so whatever you've been doing focusing on it's amazing dude uh keep doing your thing thanks thank you for being so fascinating i always enjoy our time together dude i could talk to you forever like like you just you you um you have a way about you when you ask questions of just like opening up the portal to where we we could literally just like riff on one question for hours and uh dude i just i appreciate your curiosity and your intelligence and and the fact that you've created what you've created so thanks for being you tom thank you brother until next time until next time alright everybody until next time be legendary take care peace oh wait where can people find you i can't believe we oh we have the ambulance of course google is google a bad word yet i don't i don't know but not yet not on my side of the world no just just you know you're fine ben greenfield fitness there.com all right and be sure to subscribe until next time be legendary take care peace [Music] so you