All things Ayahuasca - with a guy named Guy
Welcome to the deeper you go, the worder it gets. I'm your host, get ready. So this episode well, first, let me say that this episode is also on YouTube. So if you were just listening to this on one of the podcast apps, it's on YouTube. I'm trying to build up my YouTube presence.
Garett:So if you wanna see a video version of this podcast, the link to the YouTube page is in the description of this podcast. So anyway, this podcast is one of my rare interview podcasts and I interview a guy named guy who just so happens to be my neighbor. And we talk about all things Ayahuasca, we talk about the process of Sama. We talk a little bit about AI and even the liver king. So this is actually fantastic conversation and I think that you are going to get a lot out of it.
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Garett:So, anyway, with that being said, let's get on to the episode. All right. Welcome to the deeper you go, the worder it gets. I'm here with a guy named Guy who just so happens to be my neighbor and also happens to be the best sidekick in the world.
Guy:Well, you very much, Garett. Thank you for that introduction. And I'm also as weird as it gets. So there you go.
Garett:You know, we've been wanting to do this podcast for a while and one of the things that was the catalyst for this is that you recently completed a SAMA, right? I did, thanks to you. Yeah. Do you want to tell everybody what the SAMA process is? Sure.
Guy:A sama is you diet a specific plant, a medicine plant, a plant ally that you can then bring into ceremony. So probably eighteen months or so before I even kind of ventured into the Sama, I got called to this little plant when I heard about it. It was Oregon grape or Mahonia. And it's a little shrub that grows up here in the Pacific Northwest and beautiful little plant, evergreen kind of like holly leaves, little spiky little hard leaves and grows these little berries that are edible and has flowers in the spring. And this particular plant just kind of entered my universe and I dug up a couple in the forest and brought them over to my land and planted them and didn't know why, but I was just really drawn to this little plant once I heard it was a medicine plant.
Guy:So that was quite a while ago. And then Garrett here mentioned that he would acquire the qualifications to open up a diet of a specific plant. And so being my next door neighbor, I thought, hey, this would be great. I could do a sama. I've always been curious about them.
Guy:And it is an extended diet of this particular plant. And then throughout, it's typically a ten to fourteen day timeframe for a shorter diet that this was. You drink Ayahuasca three times, at least that was the protocol that I followed. Once at the beginning of the diet, the second kind of midpoint, it's just a cleanse and kind of a check-in with the medicine and then a final Ayahuasca ceremony to close the diet. And then throughout that two week timeframe, you are on an extremely restrictive diet.
Guy:This diet of course is the typical Ayahuasca diet of no salt, no sugar, no processed food, no garlic, no onion, no red meat, no pork, no sex, no sex of any kind, no corn. Fun. Exactly. But it takes it to another level. So typically, I do all the cooking for Ayahuasca retreats and I'm able to use a whole bunch of different herbs and different fruits and vegetables to really kind of create flavor when in the absence of sugar, salt, garlic and onion, are the, and any kind of hot spicy seasonings.
Guy:This particular diet is again super restrictive. So the only food I could eat was white fish, which would be either tilapia or trout, chicken, potatoes, sweet potatoes, zucchini, oatmeal, bananas, and green apples. Nothing else. No herbs, no seasonings, no nothing. And then on top of that, there's no inputs.
Guy:So what an input is, everything from music to video to reading even was not allowed. And so that said, you are allowed to conduct outputs. So writing, creating art, creating music yourself, singing away, I'm always belting out songs off key next door anyways. I don't listen to a lot of music, so that part was easy. But this combination of a very restricted diet, an energetic diet, an energetic restriction with the outside world really kind of dials up your sensitivity to the energy of the plant.
Guy:Now with the plant itself, with mahonia, you make a tea out of the root. That tea is consumed first thing in the morning on an empty stomach and you have a cup of tea, brew the tea up, you blow some Apacho smoke and bless the tea. Thank grandfather tobacco for being there to help you out with the process. And then you drink the tea just in a quiet contemplation. That was done every day except for a couple.
Guy:And in the case of Mahonia, it is an antibacterial microbial. So Garrett recommended a pause on the tea midway point because with the antimicrobial effect, it can really kill off your gut biome. So the good gut bacteria. And so I took a break midway, took a couple of days off and then resumed with the tea. During this process, I've done a lot of medicine and taken a lot of psychedelics over the years.
Guy:First experimented in psychedelics, I was 14. And so I'm 60 now, so do the math. This was by far the most eye opening and profound medicine experience of my life. And it had all kinds of very positive outcomes. During the diet, I was super productive.
Guy:I was like all these things that over at my place where some of them, these were chores that I had when I first moved in, oh, I got to take care of that one day. Four years later, that one day still hadn't come. With the Sama, I was on it. I was fixing things. I was clearing trails.
Guy:I was cutting down dead trees. I created two pieces of new art for my house. I did a whole bunch of writing. Worked out every day. I was like really, I was joking around saying, man, wish I was like this all the time.
Guy:I was just super productive. The other thing, the other big positive outcome of it was with the no inputs. And I made the conscious decision to delete Instagram and LinkedIn from my phone. Those are two kind of time sucks for me on my phone and I would find myself scrolling and spending too much time staring at my phone, engaging with those two platforms. So I need them for my work.
Guy:And so I just left them on my laptop and I deleted them from my phone. And so throughout the summer, I never looked at my laptop anyways, except to do some writing. So after the diet was done, I was like, I'm not never putting these things back on my phone. Was like, I got a piece of my life back. Especially in the case of Instagram where, I would just find myself mindlessly scrolling through stuff sometimes, sometimes spending thirty, forty minutes just wasting time.
Garett:Yeah, that's one of those things that I find that the diet SAMA process, and actually let me say something to people because those of us that have done samas or have been in the medicine world, we kind of say sama, diet and dieta. Those three words can kind of mean the same thing. So people listening around, we kind of throw those in and out. Essentially those can mean the same thing. But one of the things that I found, and that was a very good description of it by the way, is that, and going to that, talking about the Instagram thing, is this SAMA process helps reconnect you to yourself and to nature because we've realized as a species, because of society we've become disconnected from ourself and the natural world and that's one of the reasons we see so many illnesses and depression and just general disease in the world.
Garett:It's really interesting that you kind of felt those urges to I don't need this anymore and that became more clear of like how much this Instagram for example, was stealing your time.
Guy:Yeah, yeah, no, it sure was. And like knowing that like now it's just on my laptop and whenever I sit down, it's very intentional. Like I'm using these because they're at the end of the day, they're both valuable tools, but when we use them intentionally and what happens is when we lose ourselves and we use them and we just allow the dopamine to kick in and the dopamine takes over. And my kids always tease me because I'm a LinkedIn nerd and that's like my primary platform, but it has exactly the same effect. I would find myself scrolling on there and just like mindlessly going through stuff.
Guy:And it's getting that kind of slice of your consciousness back and getting more control, for lack of a better term, over our consciousness, our attention, our heart for that matter.
Garett:Yeah, and I had this other thought just to bring something up about the SAMA process of why would you do Sama? There are a couple reasons why someone may do it. I find that to understand the Sama process better, have to understand that we kind of live on three planes of consciousness, the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. This idea of the Sama is this idea that I call spiritual herbalism, where that we are realizing even though science can't prove this that plants have consciousness, a spiritual or energetic soul to them, just like I do and you do and individuals do. So a plant that usually has physical medicinal qualities can also have these spiritual and energetic qualities.
Garett:And so people may do a sama for one or two reasons or a combination of both. And one, if you're dealing with like let's say a major trauma or some type of illness or something, some big issue that's really affecting your life, would sit down with a practitioner and after that conversation they would say, yeah, you should diet Mahonia or you should diet Lavender or Ajo Sasha for two weeks. That would also be an opportunity for you to bond with that plant but get more of its medicinal qualities. And then another side of it is just for personal growth because you develop a relationship with that spirit of that plant. And so as you were talking about all the things you can't do and how you're supposed to just kind of be in isolation and no input because the only input you're supposed to be receiving is communication from your plant.
Garett:And what I've learned over the years is that the plants speak to you very subtly and they speak to you through your intuition and if our mind is clouded with books or television or social media or news and politics you'll never hear the plant. So what other kind of benefits did you have from Mahonia? Did you ever meet the spirit of Mahonia?
Guy:Oh yeah, absolutely. Like I mentioned, I created two art pieces and the spirit of the planet was really evident there. Mahonia also comes up every time I drink Ayahuasca now. So assisting you in ceremony, the plant's presence is there. I know you usually call it in when you sing to me and you dig up stuff every time and I feel that little taproot going way, way, way down and digging up stuff that is clearly epigenetic in nature.
Guy:All the trauma in our lineage, we talk about trauma and typically people talk about lived trauma and lived experience, but our trauma goes back seven generations. So, myself, I had indigenous blood. So the trauma of my lineage, indigenous peoples, my grandmother on my dad's side, my great grandmother, she only had one name, she was full blooded Indian and my grandma was ashamed of that. And she obfuscated that from our lineage and would never bring it up and was ashamed of it. So, the shame around origins, the trauma of, on my mom's side, sexual abuse, poverty, substance use disorders, all these things, they've all come up in ceremony and come out.
Guy:And it's not to say there isn't more because every time you sing to me, you make me puke, Garrett.
Garett:Which is the highest compliment anyone can pay.
Guy:That's right. It's, I always, and I usually end up laughing at the end of it because I'm always like, how can there be more? But we are these energetic onions, you know, you keep peeling back the layers and there's more stuff. It's not to say that, Oh gee, what, there's no end to this, because when we think there's an end to something, when it comes to this kind of work and we're dealing with consciousness and the cosmic expanse of everything, like we're fooling ourselves because the work is endless. And just like the work in this life is endless about trying to be our best and to live our purpose and to live our truth.
Guy:It's constant work. Being a human being is, it's not supposed to be easy. And so, that's why we're here. And that's one thing that for me, my journey with medicine has been really just absolutely mind blowing and just life changing in every way is that it brought me out of this world where it was all about me having fun and egoic hedonistic pleasure and about making a real difference in my own life, my family's life and my community. Made me so much better of a person.
Guy:It's not to say I was a shithead before and definitely not a complete shithead now, but it just made me just a much more thoughtful, purposeful human being. And can't say enough about it. The sawmill was a huge step forward, a huge kind of step forward with the plant that connection, like I've got a bunch of them planted around my yard and man, I just, I feel the love every time I see those little things and the love in that last ceremony. When you brought back my mom's memory, like that was, man, it was just absolutely mind blowing. And it was all Mahonia, it was all Mahonia coming in and pulling out that blockage and allowing me to connect to my mom's spirit.
Guy:It's beautiful.
Garett:Yeah, and so it's one of the things, know, the SAMA process is just absolutely amazing and it's something that, you know, I recommend to everybody when you feel called. Huge It's commitment, but I've been on the receiving end of several different Samas and now as I'm continuing in my journey, I'm now on the end of giving somos or at least being on the other end of helping open one up and guide. And it's really interesting of this give and this take and how this works where I feel like you got a lot out of it and I got just as much out of it, if not more, by being on that other side. We had talked about this before that out of all the plants that I've done a sauna with, I always felt Mahonia's presence. It was more of an energetic protector for me, but
Guy:when
Garett:I'm working in ceremony and I'm calling in my plants, it always kind of felt like it was in the background a little bit. I always, and so when you would, so when we came to this idea that we were going to do the sama, and I was like, okay, this is good. This gave me an opportunity to really focus on that plant. And it strengthened my connection with Mahonia and it just, and then now having you in the room and I can feel it and it's really interesting. So that allowed, it allowed me now where I can feel it coming out of the songs and just
Guy:Every time you sing to me, the minute I hear you say Mahonia, I feel it starting to come up. I feel the puke coming up every time. And I'm like, Oh Jesus, here
Garett:it comes.
Guy:That Yeah. Yeah. Reciprocity of the benefits of the medicine, think is, I feel it too in assisting. Like, when you work with people with medicines and you see them attain these gifts of healing and expansion, it heals and expands you at the same time. It's this beautiful reciprocity.
Guy:It makes you stronger, makes you more committed to the work, more committed to yourself and community. It's just, it lifts all boats. Talk about reciprocity in medicine. That's a huge part of it. It's just the energetic, loving reciprocity of being in ceremony together and reaping the benefits of that.
Garett:Yeah, it's kind of an analogy for life, right? You It give and you shall receive and maybe the more you give the more you receive.
Guy:It is. I always say ceremony is a microcosm of the greater realm of life. And it's always like this amplified, multi colored version of the lessons that are evident in everyday life, They're amplified and they're kind of in your face.
Garett:Yeah. Well, I mean, to piggyback on that, I was thinking about something you said about how your journey in the medicine has made you a better person. It's that's what Ayahuasca does which is super amazing and mind blowing. Mean all plant medicines can be good. I won't say they are good because it all depends on intention and setting and all these things.
Garett:But there's something about Ayahuasca, especially in the Shapebo tradition that there's nothing like it. We all have a soul and a spirit and our connection to source and that, but that connection or light for a metaphor, to use a metaphor, gets dimmed by all the programming of society, our negative thoughts, our childhood, our generational trauma, all these things are just compounding and they are blocking our light and they're blocking and the more your light shines the more you are on your journey of being who you should be. And so these ceremonies and these medicines they help remove those energetic blockages. Those energetic blockages could be all kinds of different things and the more you remove those the more your light starts to shine and the more your true personality starts to shine and I believe everybody on the planet has a purpose and the highest potential. And your highest potential, you know, think about this all the time as like a mental exercise, like what would your highest potential self look like?
Garett:How would they eat? How would they move through the world? So, it's not uncommon for people to do an Ayahuasca ceremony or two and then all of a sudden they stop drinking. And they're like, I just feel like working out and I feel like sitting in nature more.
Guy:It's so common. I've had all those things. My first Ayahuasca ceremony, I quit cocaine and cigarettes. I've touched cigarettes since then. Think I've smoked maybe like 10 over the past five years.
Guy:Every once in a while, go, yeah, I'll have one of those. But I don't pick, I don't go buy a pack and start smoking. I have no interest in it. But my first Ayahuasca ceremony, she was like, no more of that, no more Coke, no more cigarettes, nope, you're done with that. And several other things have been eliminated from my repertoire since committing to medicine work.
Guy:I was like, I think I've talked to you about this before, I'm a dopamine addict, like just give me dopamine, like any way I'll get it, it's sex, drugs, shopping, Oh yeah, just give me that dough, that pleasure. Dopamine is something that you always continue, you have to chase because it wears off real fast. And so, I think you sang to me once and you said, what do you want to work on? I said, my addiction to my dopamine. And it's been a marked improvement since then where I became consciously aware of, Oh, I'm doing that for dopamine, the Instagram thing, scrolling like that dopamine, dopamine and just being aware, oh, is this a dopamine thing I'm doing?
Guy:And if so, why am I diverting away? Like what's going on? Awareness is that source of the foundation to healing and improving our human experience. And the more we are aware of things, unless we're aware of it, we can't do anything about it. And so awareness, step one, step two, take meaningful action to change the behavior and through awareness then take action.
Guy:And so, yeah, it's been, about, I know you talk a lot about, when we have a retreat, you talk to our guests about, our goal is always that you leave a better person. And for me, every ceremony I leave ceremony a better person, Every one. I'm always like, well, how's she gonna do better than last time? Gee, that's a tough act to follow, never fails. There's always something completely wow about the next time I drink Ayahuasca.
Guy:There is no other more intelligent medicine that I've certainly ever experienced. Again, I've taken a lot of psychedelics over the years and I'm a big fan of mushrooms, but nothing like Ayahuasca. It's just like this heightened supreme loving intelligence that just, it's unparalleled.
Garett:Yeah, definitely feels like a technology and that's always the thing that blows my mind every time is the intelligence of it. Same. You know, it's not logical, it's more intuitional based and I think that that's always good to remind people because sometimes people hear these stories and then maybe they try it and it doesn't work out very logical So then they get confused by that. Once you're able to tap into your intuition and your heart brain, then you can start to see the intelligence of these medicines.
Guy:The heart brain that you brought up, are you aware of the HeartMath Institute? Am. That's what that is. It's that connection between our thinking mind and our feeling mind. And that connection between and creating that synergy and that connection between the two where we can start making more decisions from here through intuition, which is never wrong ever.
Guy:Versus this, which will sidetrack us based on fears, based on preconditioning, based on all the things that you mentioned earlier that kind of take us off course in this human experience.
Garett:Yeah, well you know, it's funny, I think most people know that we have two minds, but maybe they don't. So we have our logical mind, and this is kind of the masculine feminine dynamic. We have our logical mind, and then we have our heart intuition mind which is more of a sensing feeling. In our society today, our society thrives on logical mind especially if you're in business or you're in the corporate world or anything like that. Corporate world is very logical.
Garett:And so you need both of these. It's the yin and the yang, the masculine and the feminine, but we've become way too dysregulated in our own mind system. And so most people are way too logical in their mind and they've lost that connection to the heart, to the sensing, to the feeling, to the intuition. I've seen where that people struggle with that in real life. Oh, by the way, a ceremony is just real life but in heightened sense and a compressed timeframe.
Garett:And so if you're way too logical in your everyday life, then that has problems that's maybe unforeseen. But when you go into a ceremony space, that gets amplified and people really struggle with that, of this whole idea of this is what we mean when we say surrender. And everyone can say I've surrendered, but your actions speak louder than your words. If you were constantly trying to be like, what did that mean? Why is this happening to me?
Garett:Blah blah blah, then you're constantly trying to analyze something and that's not going to allow you to, you'll still reap the rewards but it's going to be a much more struggle, right? It's more of a fight. Yeah,
Guy:and I'm always told in ceremony, don't think, don't think. It's always like, stop thinking, stop thinking. And then I think I mentioned to you that it was our last retreat and at one point, mother Ayahuasca says to me, she's like, I'm not paying you to think, which I thought was super funny. I was giggling all night. I thought it was the funniest thing.
Guy:And it's true because that analytical mind to try to unpack stuff while it's happening, you're talking about a completely different realm of consciousness. And when this tiny little monkey brain tries to figure it out while you're under the influence of this very strong medicine, it's only going to have a confounding and a confusing and a often troubling effect. You have to, to your point, just surrender and just allow the movie to play out. I always tell folks, it's like watching Netflix. It's like, just sit back and let her tell her story.
Guy:And I always say too, surrender is not a decision, it's an event. It's not something that comes from here. Surrender just happens. It takes over us and we lose it in a good way.
Garett:Yeah, and I think it comes down to trust too. I get it that if you've never done this before then it's hard to trust something you have no experience with. I get that, but the more you can trust the process, the easier it becomes. I remember one time, a long time ago in my journey, I had a major purge and oftentimes people always want
Guy:to know like, you know,
Garett:what are you purging? Because you'll hear stories of like, you know, I purged the trauma of my grandfather or whatever. And, and I had this really crazy purge and I had kind of been known for having crazy purges and so people would always ask, Well, what are you purging? And I would never know, right? So this would get into my head.
Garett:Like, Well, I should know what I'm purging. I got this very clear message that said, Don't worry about it. What you're doing right now is you are dropping dead weight. You are removing baggage because where you are going, you are just getting rid of things you don't need and that's all you need to know about it. And that all of a sudden, that was a big shift because it was like, who cares?
Garett:That's Who exactly cares? As long as is like, I've got a long way to go. We've all got a long way to go and we get too caught up in what am I purging? What am I working through and all this kind of stuff. That matters to a certain extent, but also we to get moving.
Garett:We've got miles ahead of us to get to where we hope we can get to or at least to improve ourselves. Sometimes it's like, I don't need that. I don't need that. It's stripping things down.
Guy:It's that trust. Exactly. And again, the microcosm of ceremony, the microcosm of the medicine versus the greater macrocosm of life. It's the same thing with life. Trust.
Guy:Instead of constantly second guessing what your heart's trying to tell you. Trust. That's faith. Call it God, universe, creator, whatever you want to call it. It's all us and it's always speaking to us.
Guy:We've got to trust. We've to first of all, to listen and then trust and follow through. And there are lots of different things that we can do to help us work with medicine. I'm a big nag about meditation, mindfulness practices, spending time in nature on a regular basis, connecting with nature, growing things, whether it's house plants or a vegetable garden, connecting with our natural world. You mentioned, being cut off, this whole disconnection, disconnection from nature is a disconnect from ourselves.
Guy:Like we're nature, we're just animals. I don't know how many times that's come up for you in ceremony, but I've just become a mammal several times where I'm just like, not even a human being. I just know I'm a mammal. And that feeling that peace of just being a mammal and just breathing and just, you know, like the heartbeat and man, it's just like this beautiful feeling of just existence, you know? And we're complicated little animals that's for sure.
Garett:Yeah, well you know what you're bringing up is good point because ceremony is a huge step in your journey if you decide to go that route. There are a million ways to the top of the mountain and you don't necessarily have to do Ayahuasca but that is a huge step in your journey but it's not the whole journey and what really makes a bigger difference I think of it in like maybe dominoes or steps like a thousand a journey with thousand miles is begins with a step and every day or every time you do something, it's another step on this journey and maybe doing something like a ceremony is five steps, five, ten steps. You slingshot a little bit ahead but you still got an infinite amount of steps to go. And so, but where you make the real progress is your daily habits of, and this is what people call integration, but you can do the pre integration, the post integration of like, eat healthy as much as you can, exercise as much as you can, meditate, stay off social media or limit it to a business only type thing and all these little things, these small things because everyone likes the sexy stuff and I get it right and because ceremony is very sexy.
Garett:It is. You know, it's doing the journaling. Yes, a little product placement there. Journaling, all those daily habits is really where you, that's where you spend the majority of your journey, right, is in the mundane, in those small habits.
Guy:And the thing, think mundane gets a dirty rap sometimes, a bad rap. And in those daily habits, it's really helpful to be aware and conscious of how we are changing and how we are improving and to celebrate that and to also have a constant sense of curiosity. And what I mean by that is really about being present with the world around us. And as much as we can to stay present in the present moment and look for all the little things that pop up in our world that are, I mean, whatever you want to call them. They're signs, they're messages, they are confirmations, affirmations.
Guy:All these things that universe puts in our path if we are present and able to notice them. And when you start to like have that as a regular practice, you quickly kind of connect to the magic of life and about how this is such a gift. Yeah, we all have struggles. We all have times where shit goes sideways and we're like, why? But to have that curiosity instead of like the, it's a, why?
Guy:It's a curiosity. What am I supposed to learn from this curve ball that I've been thrown? And to have that curiosity and that sense of gratitude for just having the experience whether it's super challenging and perceived as negative or something that is just a celebratory gift because we get both in life. And at the end of the day, challenges can sometimes, we can turn them around as like amazing gifts when we look for what the insights and the lessons are in them versus like, why am I being punished? Why is this happening to me?
Guy:And it flips the script, It flips the script and medicine work helps us fine tune that sensitivity and that awareness, but more importantly, the daily practices, because that it's like working out, your previous personal trainer and gym owner and all that, it's just like working out our body, our muscles, working out our connection to our heart, working out our intuition on a daily basis. It strengthens it. I always play little games about it. I wake up, I go, what time is it? And then I'll look and I'll see if I can get the time within a couple of minutes, play little games about numbers, like on my phone, looking at my portfolio or something, like, what's it at?
Guy:Just strengthening those little connections. What's somebody gonna say? Yeah,
Garett:well, that's, I mean, it's funny because this is, I find that a lot of these concepts are so simple, but simple doesn't mean easy. Right. Right? But, like the present, like this is a concept we all understand, but it's so hard to wrap our head around is like all we have is the present moment. That's it.
Garett:That's it. The past is done, the future doesn't exist, it's just right And this is something I've been working on and I've made a lot of progress and this is like, know, I'm doing it now. Because sometimes we get so caught up in the future or so people are either, there's a quote, can't remember where it's like, you're caught up in the past, worry or something like that or it's depression. Depression. Depression and then if you're concerned about the future, that's where like the worry the anxiousness comes in.
Garett:There's a quote out there that's much more eloquent than we just try to struggle through that.
Guy:Yeah, but anything but the present is not an ideal state because we're not able to, again, see all those little gifts that are everywhere. And not only that, but to be aware of
Garett:what our mind is doing and not be such a bitch to what's going on up here. Right, right. And we see it all the time. Like you see people who are stuck in this old story about themselves they tell that over and over again. And when they tell that story and as I'm becoming more and more sensitive to energies, I can see this dark cloud, especially if their story is a depressive one and they start talking about the story and their shoulders start slumping forward and they start, they tell the story of how they're, whatever, how they're a victim or how they're, then likewise you see people who are constantly worried about the future of how am I going to do this, how am I going to get there, what's this going to mean, what's my financial situation going to look like in six months?
Garett:This and all these things and you're like, I mean we need to be, need, we can't just blindly go through life, but it's a balance, but you know, that's where gratitude I think comes in is like, I'm doing good now, I'm healthy now, I've got a roof over my head, I've got a refrigerator full of food, I'm healthy, all these things and it's like that's what's happening right now And it's all that matters. Yeah, it's all that It's
Guy:all that matters. And yeah, you know, it's good to have goals. It's good to have like, oh, this could be a place where I could, you know, a North Star, so to speak, because it gives you those daily things that you can work on, those baby steps that you talked about where you've got a vision. Path to you But and I have talked about this, the path to that vision is never a straight line. It's all over the map and we can never like put a mental map of that in front of us and go, this is gonna be the path.
Guy:But when we look back and we've talked about this too, when you look back, you go, Oh, I see why I was diverted here. And then I met that person, then I moved here it all makes sense when you look backward, but you know, there's no way you can, you know, map it out yourself because again, it's far beyond us.
Garett:Yeah, and that's the Steve Jobs quote where it's like, it's impossible to connect the dots looking forward. It's only when you look back that you can see how it all played out. And I encourage everyone who's listening to think back over your life, especially when you've had some really good moves in your life and look back and see how those dots connected and it's never a linear line. It's always like, oh, broke up with somebody and then I moved to a city and then I met someone else who then introduced me to this and that's how I got this job and then that's how I met my future partner and boom boom boom boom boom and then you're like oh wow those all and so this is all to say that a good practice is to, you should always have goals, should always want to be striving to be a better version of yourself and that's your north star but then and do those daily practices, stay present and trust because, and it's hard, I get it. I struggled with it for years and I still struggle with it sometimes.
Garett:Me too. But I think everyone does, but the universe rewards courage. And if you can just, if you have that north star and you say, you know what, I don't know how it's going to work out, but I know I have to make this leap, because that's the only thing that's gonna get me to that north star but I don't know how it's gonna work out. And take that leap, trust that the universe will catch you and because what happens is you're like I know I have to make this leap but then after you make that leap, you can't, your logical mind cannot see how it's going to continue on. And because you can't make that connection, you end up not doing anything.
Garett:Right. Where then you just have to be like, I know this leap is necessary for my journey. I don't know how it's going to turn out, but oh well, here we go. I'm jumping in head first and I'm going to have faith, have gratitude, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna journal every day.
Garett:Yeah, but I'm gonna journal my unplugged journal and I'm gonna jump head first into this.
Guy:You know the funny thing about that journal, you've got the I am statement and then there's the quote underneath it. Probably about half the time when I wrote the I am statement, it relates to the quote underneath. Oh yeah. Yeah, it's really weird. That's cool.
Guy:Yeah, I'm always like, Oh wow, look at that. It happens like probably half the time. It's that thing, it's that little, but I'm not intentionally going, Oh, I wanna try and match it up to the quote. I just write my statement. Then I read the quote and I'm like, what the fuck?
Guy:Yeah, it's super weird. But yeah, you know, like trusting, me moving up here, there was no cabin here, it was all falling down, my place was a mess. I moved up here by myself, my little aging dog, no job, fresh mortgage, I didn't know how I was gonna pay it. Trust, trust, trust at every corner. Just keep going, keep doing it, trust.
Guy:Know that when you're leading with heart, when you're leading with love, when you do your best to be honest. And I say that because it's only been the last few years where I've become completely honest.
Garett:Mean, I used to lie all the time. You know
Guy:I lost him, man. She don't like lying. Yeah, she do
Garett:not like it. Well, it's interesting that you say that because one of the things, you know, I always, I'm not completely disconnected from, you know, our culture. I always keep my pulse on certain things and right now in like the of the fitness or influence community, there's a lot of people that are getting called out for essentially lying. It's really interesting that it's all happening right now because with the emergence of like AI and stuff where I think, because you've been talking about with Instagram, think something like AI can be a very powerful tool but we also have to be careful because every tool can also be used as a weapon. That's right.
Garett:With the emergence of AI, pretty soon anything you see on the screen or anything you hear, unless you are witnessing it in the flesh, you're not going to be able to believe. They're going to be able to recreate anything. And so what I'm getting at is like honesty is always the best virtue, but I think even more in this shift that we're going into AI, it's like, and I think that's why all these fitness influencers are starting to like, the facade is starting to break, because I think energetically we're going into this new age where like, if you are anything but genuine, you're not going to make it. And I don't know, it's just interesting.
Guy:No, I think you're right. It's a turning point. And when we lie, we lie to ourselves. And when we lie to ourselves, we're completely taken away from alignment, from flow, from purpose. All we do is damage ourselves.
Guy:Well, that's the thing. I don't know if you know who the liver king is. I don't know. Oh, the guy that eats all the liver? Yeah.
Guy:That bodybuilder kind Yeah. Of Oh yeah.
Garett:Yeah. So long story short, he's one of the big fitness influencers that he got called out a couple of years ago because he was lying about his steroid use. Why the fact anyone believed that he was natural because he just looked like a walking bottle of Tremblon. But he had been lying for years going on podcasts saying he was all natural, blah blah blah and you know now he's on this verge of like having this complete mental breakdown and it came out that his companies were lying about the ingredients in their supplements and so it was this whole cascading thing but he's kind of just going off the deep end and what is making me realize is like what you said was like when you lie you're not just lying to people but you're lying to yourself and that is like an, I mean, what am I thinking, a possession, right? An energetic possession, a dark energy that just starts eating your soul and eventually like there's no coming back from it.
Garett:And I think that's the other thing that this, all these influencers that are caught lying, it's showing that like you're not going to get away with it and all it's gonna do is, the longer you get away with it, the harder the fall, right?
Guy:And I think you're right, the advent of AI is that truth is gonna become more and more valuable to humanity. Where it's gonna be, people are gonna realize how important it is. And, you know, important for ourselves, for our families, for our communities, for humanity in general and all the sentient and non sentient beings. I don't think everything's sentient anyways, but, for all of consciousness for that matter, you know, it's like, yeah, truth is everything. It's everything.
Guy:Ayahuasca don't like lying too. She will kick your butt if you lie. Yeah. She will hold up that mirror. Man, yeah.
Garett:Well another thing I wanted to talk about real quick was marijuana. Oh yeah. So I'll give a little background and then I'll let you talk about it. One of the things I found interesting about Ayahuasca, particularly in the Shapevo tradition, is that Ayahuasca and marijuana or cannabis, they do not get along at all. And I always joke around calling it like the queen bee syndrome of like two powerful females just usually never get along.
Garett:But it's fascinating because you think of like, are all plant medicines good or bad? Think the answer is yes and no. I think cannabis can be a very powerful plant medicine and it can be good, but it's got a lot of what the Shativa call Shatana in it. And it's got a dark side to it. And one of the interesting things about it is,
Guy:what do they call it?
Garett:The sticky icky, right? Marijuana's got the very stickiness and that energetically tends to engulf people into her world. She's very possessive. She kinda wraps people in her world and keeps them there and Ayahuasca is trying to open people up and so they battle. So as I was coming up learning about this stuff, one of the things I thought was fascinating is so my teacher Ricardo Amaringo from Niue Rao I'd heard this second hand but so they always clean off drug energy and so you think like cocaine, meth, heroin, alcohol they say that the hardest energy to clean off is marijuana.
Garett:And so as I'm progressing on my journey I get a chance to meet someone who's covered in marijuana energy Sticky boy. It was very interesting and very hard for me to deal with and so I'm curious of like what that whole experience was like for you. Yeah.
Guy:So I first came to Ayahuasca cannabis with another practitioner and he mentioned that I had him sing to my lung issue, respiratory issues, which was quite complex actually. It was more than just cannabis. It was an energetic block as well that I learned later. So he cleans me out and just really had to work his ass off to clean me out. And I stopped for six months and when I talked to him after ceremony, I said, how long should I quit for?
Guy:He said, I go like, three months? He's like, no. Go, he goes minimum six months, minimum. And so I stopped for six months and then I picked up cannabis again and I love smoking cannabis, like I love it. And I love cannabis in nature and living in nature.
Guy:I was just like, I was always wanting to blaze one and go out there and sit by the river and be among the trees and the animals and all that. I mean, it's just like such an amazing connector and it's also, I used it for meditation to drop it really fast and deep. At the end of the day, was just a crutch. I didn't need it. It was my mind telling me I needed it.
Guy:So when I came to you and we started assisting with ceremony and the first order of business was cleaning cannabis out. And I remember like, you did a great job and you succeeded. And it was like a lot of purging and a lot of coughing, a lot of stuff coming up and it's still coming up. But the energetic attachment is gone. And what I learned, what Ayahuasca taught me was that I used cannabis as a subconscious means of holding myself back because of my fear of success.
Guy:Which sounds weird. It sounds complicated. It sounds like why would you want to not be successful? I could share that when I was a little kid and I was really good in school and I was a published writer when I was 11 and I was bullied because I was really good in school and because I wrote poetry and because I was sensitive and because all the teachers loved me. And so when I was successful in school as a kid, I was punished, I was threatened, my safety was threatened.
Guy:And so I made a conscious decision at that age to not be all that. And the main way I did that was by becoming a little stoner and connecting with other stoners. So I had friends and I had a means of kind of not being who I truly was, which is someone who's pretty dialed in, pretty dialed into nature, pretty dialed into my connection with source energy. Someone who loves to write, express himself, creative, I'm super emotional, I cry at the drop of a hat. I mean, all these things that typically in masculine male culture are frowned upon.
Guy:And I shielded myself from all that truth of who I really was by using cannabis was my main shield, was my main way of becoming who I am not. Mean, that was like profound for me because like the first time I quit for my ayahuasca, was like, okay, I'm gonna quit and I'm not gonna do this because it's bad for me, But I didn't know why. And so, you know, after you cleaned me out and then coming to the why and I was like, oh wow, like wow. And all of a sudden like that attachment was gone. I wasn't like, oh gee, I really, And every once in a while I go, it'd be nice to smoke some right now.
Guy:But I don't. I'm just like, no, I'm not. Like just, I think of the smell of it and everything. And even that kind of turns me off. I'm like, yeah, I'm good.
Guy:And so like, and it's been like nine, ten months now. It was like last September when you cleaned me out, it'll be a year in September. Wow. Which is the longest I've ever gone since I was like 12 years old. That's when I started smoking weed, which is crazy.
Guy:Yeah. And I honestly don't know if I'll ever pick it up again. I don't say never, but I just, I also know that I don't have a desire to. And when it does kind of bubble up a bit, I just go, no, it's not aligned with my purpose.
Garett:Yeah, it's super fascinating and I don't fully understand it. I've, you know, I've, because I've enjoyed it in the past too. I really used to like doing it. I wasn't a big smoker, but I would make a tincture out of it and then I would do that and then I'd love doing some writing and filling all the expansiveness. But the further I've gone into this work now, I mean sometimes even just smelling it, just feels so heavy and sticky to me.
Garett:I don't want to call it necessarily bad because I think it has its place but I think that most 99 out of 100 people who think they have a good relationship do not have a good relationship with right. It just For the record, I'd rather someone smoke than pound alcohol all day. So it's, you know, pick your battles there. Or pop pills for that matter.
Guy:Cannabis is amazing medicine and it has all kinds, but you know, not to interrupt, but you know, she can be anything to anybody. That's the other thing about cannabis. She's a chameleon and she has all these magical powers. All she cares about is us using her. That's it.
Guy:Yeah.
Garett:And so, yeah, I mean, there are some great uses and like I said, and there are better uses of it than other things. But it's just interesting how it seeps into everyone's life slowly where it seems like almost everybody kind of has the same story of like, yeah, I smoke a little joint on Friday night with a group of friends and then all of sudden it's like, well, Saturday night too. And then before you know it, it's like people are doing bong rips the second they get up just to go, just to walk to
Guy:the mailbox. Right. So, Yeah. You know, me with cannabis was like, I was, I used it every day. I was stoned all the time and it's not like I would wake and bake, but sometimes I would, before I did my morning walk.
Guy:I would drive under the influence, which is illegal and dangerous. It was just not conducive to living a full, healthy, productive life. And those are all things that I want, someone who's getting older, my health has become more of a conscious blessing and that I am quite healthy for my age. I don't have any major issues or anything like that. Need a bunch of pharmaceuticals to keep me ticking or anything like that.
Guy:And I want to stay that way. And I like being active. I like hiking. I like being outdoors. I like working in the land.
Guy:I like being physical. You know, was like, it affected my breathing, it affected my energy, it affected my intelligence, it affected my decision making, it affected my safety, all these things.
Garett:Well, and I'm gonna say one other thing and then we'll move on because I think the other problem with cannabis has kind of been the industrialization of it because the joke is this isn't your grandpa's weed but it's not your grandpa's weed. One of the things that I've learned about cannabis is it has a whole bunch of cannabinoids. The only ones we really know of are THC and CBD and maybe if you're really cool you know about CBN or whatever. But there's really like 12 or 15 of these.
Guy:There's hundreds of cannabinoids.
Garett:Okay, Yeah, and I saw a documentary one time where how it's really supposed to be with the plant is it's supposed to be like an equalizer. You know, you think of the DJ thing where you got your bass and your treble and your mids and so it should be more of this wave like thing or have some sort of slope or curve to the whole spectrum of cannabinoids and that's really how the plan is supposed to be. But what's happened is because of commercialization is that, and we know that oh well THC gets you high, that you see if you go into a cannabis store and you look at these strains it'll say like 98% THC or sometimes 99% THC and then everything else is point one, point zero two, point three and so like they've completely thrown this thing out of whack too. So you know, we need to like make cannabis balanced Naturally. Yeah.
Guy:There's a hat there. Yeah. There's a hat there. No, it's almost like, what cocaine is to the cocoa leaf. Yep.
Guy:It's been completely just, you know, just what's just thrashed. It's been turned into something unhealthy and not balanced. And, you know, again, I love cannabis and cannabis is amazing medicine. If I ever used it again, it would be in a ceremony. It would be like, okay, I'm gonna use some cannabis and I'm gonna have a ceremony because cannabis is also very psychedelic.
Garett:And
Guy:I found it very spiritually connecting but what I learned from removing it from my life is I have the same connection without It was just a reason to do Yeah,
Garett:well cool. I think we'll probably wrap it up here in a second. This has been a really good conversation.
Guy:Yeah, been great.
Garett:Anything else you want to say in regards to anything we talked about? Well, journal is really great. The journal is great.
Guy:And you know, we talk about daily practices and journaling is obviously a great daily practice. What I like about this, I really didn't intend to pump the book because I've already done it so badly, is that it's just a nice quick check-in and sometimes that's all we need. That's all we need to like make sure that we stay on track because it's really easy to get off track. Life can take us out of our alignment. It can take us off our path.
Guy:It can make us forget. And so this helps us remember what we're doing. As Garrett mentioned too, and I think I mentioned too, like medicine work isn't for everyone, Ayahuasca isn't for everyone, that's for sure, everyone can benefit from daily practices and whether that's meditation or journaling or just practicing being in the present moment, having a garden, practice being kind, compassionate, understanding, all of those things. It's all kind of part of the practice of being a human being, which is kind of why we're all here. It's all just a practice.
Guy:Be kind to yourself and have compassion for yourself and know that you're just practicing like the rest of us.
Garett:Yeah. Beautiful. All said. Thank you. Thank you.